The former chief executive of Nuffield Health was paid over £1.4m in his last year at the charity, according to recently filed documents.
Despite being replaced by former Bupa boss Alex Perry as CEO in September last year, Steve Gray received 47% more in 2024 than he did the year before (£970,000-£980,000).
Meanwhile, the charity paid £6.1m in redundancy and termination costs, the accounts for 2024 show, up from £1.3m the year before.
The charity’s overall staff related costs grew to £562m in 2024 from £526m the year before, with its average number of employees increasing by over 1,000 to 19,361.
Nuffield Health’s overall income increased by almost £100m year-on-year to £1.45bn in 2024, the accounts show, while its expenditure rose by £15m to £1.49bn.
Its income growth was driven by a rise in turnover from its hospitals (£1.03bn), while money from its wellbeing services also increased to £388m.
The charity received £2.7m in grant income (2023: £1.6m) and gained £1.6m through its disposal of assets including a deal with Nero Propco LLP.
‘Year of transition’
Gray is named as the highest-paid individual in Nuffield Health’s accounts, which state that its highest-paid employee received between £1.43m and £1.44m in 2024.
A Nuffield Health spokesperson told Civil Society: “Nuffield Health is a large organisation with a group turnover of £1.5bn and more than 18,000 staff working across a national network of hospitals, fitness and wellbeing centres, healthcare clinics and free to access community programmes.
“We operate in a highly competitive sector delivering health services at scale. Our salaries must be competitive to ensure we attract the right people to lead the organisation and fulfil our charitable purpose to build a healthier nation.”
They added: “The charity’s long-term outlook is positive, and we continue to see high demand for our services.
“However, as with many organisations, we are experiencing a challenging external environment which have increased our operating costs.
“In 2024, we focused on making the charity more efficient, which included work to reduce the cost of delivering our services and optimising our workforce. As part of this we restructured teams, resulting in redundancies.
“The objective of this work was to generate additional funds for investment, and to make the organisation more sustainable for the long term.
“Thanks to these changes we are in a good financial position, and this enabled us to relaunch a proactive programme of investment in our estate, our systems, our people, and our unique free-to-access social impact programmes which delivered a social value of £126m in the year.”
Writing in the accounts, the charity’s chair Natalie-Jane Macdonald said: “2024 will go down as a year of transition as we said goodbye to Steve Gray, and welcomed Alex Perry to the role of chief executive officer.
“Steve led Nuffield Health through an eventful period in the history of not only our charity but also the healthcare industry in – and the country as a whole – and for this we’re indebted to him.”
Macdonald, who took on the temporary role of executive chair last year before Perry’s arrival, said the charity had focused on achieving a surplus through its paid-for services and emphasised its productivity and scalability.
“Going forward, we need to continue the focus on being efficient and profitable, in order to increase our ability to invest in our free services, such as our acclaimed Joint Pain Programme, and delivering vital support to people living with unmet health needs,” she added.
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