A U.K. wide issue. Those of us who remember a time when you could fly Scottish hems then return offshore without losing all your years of effective service can merely lament the current state of play.
A combination of charities with toxic cultures and penny pinching commercial entities have driven the race to the bottom.
Some now have rapidly increased salaries quoted in job offers to £90k but it is too little too late and they are not filling available slots.
Trawl the numerous HEMS charity websites and you can see what and where priorities are but the ratio of corporate staff to frontline crew, those in the south east with ridiculous volumes of cash are serious offenders. Purchases of new shiny airframes with claimed needs that are unsupported, transitions to multi crew where it benefits nobody except the few pilots who want to continue past 60, lengthy lists of clinicians who average so few shifts a month they are mere passengers throughout are all contributory factors.
Most of those who have happily returned offshore from the hems arena regurgitate the same frustrations: ‘great job but the charities and operating companies are all as bad as each other’.
Those with shiny new red H135’s and royal connections had at least 3 captains vacancies recently having lost some of their newest recruits, 145 NVIS captains getting £1200 a shift from another as most resigned within weeks of each other, and operations in the midlands with a turnover of freelance crew that is inexplicable save abject incompetent management and controlling behaviour. Recently departed toxic Scottish hems management have taken their attitudes to sunny sandy places, meaning an impending exodus there.
Conflicts of interest are also abound such as charity post holders getting contracts without due process for their own private companies or being given type ratings in return for temp contracts should be investigated.
Though hems in the Emerald Isle is just as bad. That’s more an issue for the regulators than the public purse.
Remove the characters at fault, force charities to publish full accounts and aircraft purchase costs for the last 12 years whilst being transparent, pay crew appropriately including contractors, stop demanding they commute long distance without accommodation and mileage and you may begin to reduce the incessant movement.
Experienced reliable crew will go where terms are best. If they keep leaving hems then hems is where the problem lies.