A FAILED health service transport privateer in Sussex is getting the chop, with the work being transferred to the NHS ambulance service.

The decision was welcomed by general union GMB, which accused contractor Coperforma of “inexperience, financial mismanagement and corporate bullying,” as well as failing to pay subcontractors.

Seventy staff will transfer from Coperforma to the NHS.

GMB organiser Gary Palmer said: “We can only applaud, along with patients and GMB members, the long-awaited decision by Sussex’s seven clinical commissioning groups to remove Coperforma from managing the patient transport service here in the county.

“Coperforma simply never got to grips with delivering a contract which far exceeded the amount of patient journeys they had organised before, and every GMB ambulance professional and contractor who worked on the contract all said the same from day one.”

He noted that two subcontracting companies used by Coperforma had gone out of business because of its inadequacies.