Not only have the Monitor caps seen most NHS Trusts who previously took on Ltd Co contractors now setting these roles as fixed terms at fairly poor rates of pay, but the IR35 now meaning that travel and subsistence costs have also lain waste to my plans (now my children are getting a bit older) to look at roles further afield. So now I can't do that either.
The cross-over into commercial settings seems almost impossible as they don't seem to 'count' the NHS experience (unless you're very technical and thus a server stack is a server stack whatever organisation it's sitting in).
I'm disappointed (but unsurprised) by the complete lack of readiness of 99% of agencies. They were poleaxed by the Monitor caps, waiting until the axe fell (at the Trust I was working at at the time, 22 contractors didn't have their contracts renewed and we let go all at the same time).
I don't want to cream money from the public purse, but the work that I do and many like me, is specialised and often these organisations don't have these staff in permanent roles to draw upon and the flexibility previously afforded to them is now gone.
Obviously in the past there were extortionate rates paid out to contractors that were completely unacceptable however take that up with whoever signed off on paying an IT contractor £1000 a day to roll out some software, don't blame the person doing that job role. I just want a decent rate that takes account of me managing my entire business myself, not causing the organisation to have to manage my payroll, tax and NIC, and which takes account of the transient nature of the work. This is an innovation and growth killer, it's utterly short-sighted and will do more harm than good. All that was needed to manage excessive spend on contractors was for the organisations (like the NHS was) to be tasked with setting fair capped rates, that's all. Hare-brained approach as usual.