FURY has erupted at an East Lancashire health trust over plans to keep disciplinary warnings on staff records once they have expired.

The row has broken out after bosses at Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley NHS Trust proposed to amend a clause in relation to warnings.

Under the present system, disciplinary warnings are wiped off an employee's record once they are spent and cannot be referred to in any subsequent disciplinary proceedings. But managers want to change the clause to say that warnings will not be totally 'expunged' from an employee's record and will only be 'disregarded' at future disciplinary proceedings.

A report by Elaine Baker, the trust's director of personnel and development, says the management proposal is in line with the ACAS guidance in the advisory handbook 'Discipline at Work,' which states that warnings should cease to be 'live' following the specified period of satisfactory conduct.

The report says: "It (the guidance) does not suggest a total expungement of the record.

"The guidance states that there may be occasions where conduct is satisfactory throughout the warning period, but lapses soon thereafter; or occasions where the misconduct is very serious and cannot realistically be disregarded for future disciplinary purposes."

The official response of the staff side of the Joint Negotiating Committee says: "This policy does not have the support of the staff side, who remain of the opinion that disciplinary warnings, once spent, should be removed from record."

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