NHS ‘recovering prices for the taxpayer’ as Covid Nightingale beds ‘offered off’

The NHS is “recovering costs for the taxpayer” after it misplaced tens of thousands and thousands constructing emergency hospitals in the course of the Covid pandemic, an investigation has revealed.

The Government ordered the well being service to assemble a collection of enormous “nightingale” hospitals to help with potential affected person overflow whereas the virus ravaged the UK, however scores of beds have been left unused.

The Daily Mirror has reported that the NHS misplaced £13million in “constructive losses” on unused emergency beds value as much as £2,500 every in as much as seven of those items.

Bosses have now been pressured to direct a mass selloff of their remaining beds, with batches on sale for 50 p.c of their unique buy worth.

The service is but to confess how a lot it has offered the items for, however some gross sales point out purchases as little as £6.

Two earlier annual reviews launched by the NHS Commissioning Board recognized “constructive losses” of £13million, which included storage charges for emergency beds “procured for the Nightingale hospitals at the beginning of the pandemic”.

When the hospitals closed, the report added it was concluded the beds “could not be used in existing hospitals as the specifications were not to the current standard as implemented in all hospitals”.

An NHS spokesman told the Mirror that the beds could not be re-purposed as they were “particularly tailor-made for the Nightingale”.

They have now “been offered to personal sellers” so the service can “get well prices for the taxpayer”.

The NHS has not disclosed what happened to the beds, but the Mirror found that, in 2021, NHS Procurement offered the beds for a significantly reduced price.

In February of that year, the department offered the Care Provider Alliance cut-price surplus Oska emergency acute beds “purchased for £2,500 every” for “50 p.c of the acquisition worth”.

The beds were listed in “batches of 5” and for 100 per customer with the possibility of “larger discounting” for larger orders.

Medical bed specialist firm Oska said in April 2020 that it had supplied 6,000 beds for the Nightingale programme, with the Mirror finding 1,000 placed on sale online and at actions over the last few months.

The publication said that auctions held by Simon Charles of Stockport on July 26 and August 1 saw 47 Oska hospital beds, two of which were model variants identified in the NHS Procurement note, sold for £6 to £17 each.

An NHS spokesman said the beds were purchased “proper initially of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic” where the NHS needed to increase bed numbers “in step with projected Covid sufferers”.

They added the majority of the Nightingale beds “have been re-purposed in healthcare settings”.

And Oska stated: “Oska were one of the many bed suppliers that felt their obligation to help the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic. We cannot comment on any Government decisions that have ensued since.”