A SCANDAL-HIT firm says the jobs of all its 150 Scottish staff are in jeopardy while going into dispute with the NHS over the disposal of clinical waste north of the border.

Temporary storage is being put in place at NHS sites across Scotland to cope with a potential backlog of clinical waste in the wake of the impasse.

Shotts-based Healthcare Environmental Services Ltd (HES), which has 350 staff across the UK, stopped serving the NHS in Scotland after being plunged into financial difficulty in the wake of allegations of around stockpiling hundreds of tonnes of waste at its sites. The Environment Agency is investigating a breach of waste regulations while HES blamed a lack of UK incinerator capacity for the crisis.

The 22-year-old company says it can continue to work with NHS in Scotland if it is paid in advance for the work.

HES managing director Garry Pettigrew said that the issues the company has faced have "destroyed this business" and he added: "No-one gives a sh*t, that's the reality. "

Asked if they were heading for an insolvency, Mr Pettigrew said: "Not through our doing, if someone else decides to do that, that's up to them. We are still trading and obviously we will continue in that mode, living within our means as long as we can."

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It comes after NHS Scotland confirmed that HES would lose its contract with them in April 2019, prompting the firm to announce that its banking facility had been cut off. Now it has warned the impasse is threatening the futures of its Scottish staff, while HES believes they are being replaced by a Spanish contractor.

In October, HES was stripped of 17 contracts with NHS trusts in England after reports that tonnes of clinical waste piled up at its sites. HES said that north of the border it had attempted to service several NHS sites but were refused access and the decision was taken to stop servicing the health service until a way forward was agreed.

Mr Pettigrew said: "For the last ten weeks in Scotland the NHS have been ready to kick in their contingency plan and that has undermined out viability and keeping our staff.

"Over the last three weeks trailers were appearing at sites with our competitor's names on them, which makes this unviable at every level."

He added: “We were servicing NHS Scotland’s sites under a restricted service until we were refused access on Friday, and the constant threat of contingency plans being put into place affected our ability to maintain staffing levels.

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"We had no choice but to stop the service. We offered to continue the collections under another company within the Healthcare Environmental Group but the NSS refused.

“I am still hopeful that we can continue to work with NHSS and Scotland’s waste will stay in Scotland and not be transported hundreds of miles to England. We believe that the new contractor’s proposal is based on taking the waste from Scotland and transporting it hundreds of miles to England for a minimum 40 weeks, increasing risk and resulting in the loss of over 150 skilled staff at our Scottish facilities."

He said they had invested £13m in the latest medical waste treatment and recycling facilities including incineration technology located in Shotts and the capacity to "safely and securely process all of Scotland’s medical waste".

"I really hope we can find a solution before the hard winter months set in," he said. " As a company with more than 23 years’ experience, we know it is partnership working that ensures Scotland’s hospitals function properly."

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Mr Pettigrew said he was trying to avoide redundancies adding: "We have pulled our belt in to make sure we survive and look after the staff and re-evaluate the business on a daily basis to see where we can pick up work go grow the business again. The reality is that the staff are just sitting here rather than being involved in the NHS's contingency plan."

HES were contracted to provide waste processing at 18 health boards across Scotland.

National Services Scotland said interim contingency arrangements have been put in place to ensure NHS Scotland services to the public are maintained.

NSS said the measures would have no impact on public health or patient services.

NSS said three principle contractors would now deal with waste at 28 larger acute sites across Scotland, while a number of smaller contractors would provide collection services to more than 4,000 community sites.

On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Social Care said that human remains and other medical waste that require professional storage and treatment were building up at dozens of NHS trusts in England after HES stopped collections.

While some hospitals cancelled their contract with HES immediately, the firm had “failed to collect waste from a further 24 trusts” it was working with in England, the department said. HES says they only halted collections after contracts were cancelled by the NHS.

An NHS major incident was declared and trusts were told to switch to contingency measures, including storing toxic or infectious waste and surgical instruments in compactors, skips and trailers on the trust’s site.

On Tuesday, health minister Stephen Hammond said NHS Improvement had “sought assurance from HES that it has not ceased trading and is capable of, and will continue to provide services”.

He said NHSI had not received that assurance from HES.

After HES’ problems came to light, the government negotiated a new waste management contract with outsourcing company Mitie for trusts which held contracts with HES.