Suppliers drop in to Meet the Buyer event

About 70 potential suppliers popped along to a drop-in event to find out information about doing business with their local NHS.

Shropshire Healthcare Procurement Service held a ‘Meet the buyer – do business with the NHS’ event on Friday at Shrewsbury Town Football Club.

The service, which is part of Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Integrated Care System (ICS), represents The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH), The Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust.

Suppliers had the chance to chat with some of our staff from Estates, Catering, the Hospitals Transformation Programme, Workforce and Recruitment departments.

Alert over change in passport rules

Lisa Rowley, a clerical officer at SaTH, would like to alert colleagues to a change in passport rules which meant she was unable to travel.

She said: “I recently went to go on holiday and had checked in with my passport the day before, which accepted my passport details. On arriving at the airport, I was told that my passport was no good for an EU country (I had few weeks prior been to Montana, USA - no problems).

“Although I had eight months left on my passport, it was all to do with the issue date that had to be 10 years by the time you return.

I was unable to claim on my insurance and have lost hundreds of pounds and would not want my colleagues going through the same.

“This was not only upsetting for myself, but also friends I was going away with. After I put this announcement on Facebook thinking I was the only person not to know, I certainly wasn’t and had lots of people contact me, either saying they were not aware or they were due to go and were in the same situation!”

The guidance states that if your passport is more than 10 years old on the day of entry, you will not be allowed in.