Recommendation 29

The National Audit Office reported that between 1.3% and 10% of staff at NHS trusts were looking at using these services, so, clearly, a substantial number of people. We asked NHS SBS what expectations it had of usage of payday advance schemes. Given NHS SBS was providing payroll services for around 400,000 people, that would be between 5000 and 40,000 people a month who would potentially be using the services. NHS SBS told us that at the point it started the pilot, it was really hard to estimate because the pilot it was running for NHS providers was one of many. The differentiator was that the scheme from NHS SBS was free at the point of use. It was voluntary and there was no cost to the employer and the employee and its estimates were a 2% adoption over the five-year period.30