St John Ambulance has reduced the number of staff on its payroll by 260, and made several redundancies at director level, its most recent accounts show.
The number of full-time equivalent staff at St John Ambulance fell from 1,767 to 1,502 in the year to December 2017. It is the second year of significant cuts at the charity, which last year shed 160 staff and made redundancies of £700,000. Redundancies this year were £500,000.
The charity did not say why this was, but it did say that it had seen a 28 per cent reduction in demand for its ambulance services from the NHS, due to restricted funding, and that it had reduced its costs for this by using fewer employees and vehicles.
The charity has cut the number of senior managers to ten, from up to 13 in previous years. Four staff earned over £60,000 when redundancy payments were included, including one individual who received between £260,000 and £270,000.
The charity appointed a new chief executive, Martin Houghton-Brown, on 2 January 2018, just after the period covered by the accounts. The previous chief executive, Sue Killen, resigned on 1 September 2017, and the charity was led on an interim basis by David Springthorpe for four months.
The charity has an overall income of £101.8m, compared to £102.2m in the previous year. Income from ambulance services was down, but all other sources of income rose slightly.
Free reserves were £19.5m, in line with the charity’s target.
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