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A locum agency has considered legal action against Allcures, which has more than 40 branches in England, after alleging the company failed to pay booking fees in full.

Team Locum operations manager Mark Blackburn told Independent Community Pharmacist Allcures owe Team Locum £312 in fees and claimed the pharmacy group ignored their emails when they tried to contact them to resolve the issue.

“We have been paid £720 out of £1,032 and still awaiting £312 to be paid. (Allcures) ignored all emails in regards to chased booking fees,” Blackburn said. “We have considered legal action but not yet got anything in process.”

Team Locum sales director Mitch Smith said: “We certainly will not be working with Allcures in the future once they have cleared their account with us.”

Allcures director Kirandeep Cheema told ICP he is looking into the claim with his company’s accounts team.

Allcures: We do our best to ensure payments go through without a hitch

Blackburn also alleged locum pharmacists on its books working for Allcures were not paid on time and one locum was not paid at all. Cheema said his company does its “best to ensure all payments go through without a hitch”.

Blackburn said although “a few have been resolved after a lot of chasing”, some locums “are still waiting on payment”. He said three locums, Karen Blair, Panagiota Pierrakou and Paige Brimble were owed £517.50, £260 and £562.80 respectively for shifts but ICP understands Allcures has now paid these sums.

“I can confirm all of the locums are not outstanding any payments,” Cheema said. “In the case of Karen Blair, she did a number of shifts over a few different days but one of her shifts there, we had two pharmacists logged on the rota at the site that day.

“Our internal processes are that we flag this to the manager at the branch or the person who made the booking and then the shift is confirmed with accounts. In this case the shift remained unconfirmed until recently.

“We have built this process to ensure there isn’t mistakes made with payments. On a number of occasions, we have had locums who make mistakes on the invoice and log shifts that they haven’t done or there is a copy/typographical error in what is a very manual system.”

Cheema said Allcures “entered into a new partnership agreement” with Locate a Locum which he insisted would help eradicate mistakes.

“We hope that our new partnership with Locate a Locum allows us to leverage their technology to achieve a more efficient system of checking shifts and rotas,” he said, insisting it will make Allcures’ locum booking system “more efficient and transparent”. Locate a Locum has been approached for comment.

“It will help us optimise our communication and also streamline payment cycles via (Locate a Locum’s) platform," Cheema added.

Last month, Locate a Locum said it removed all shifts posted on its website by Allcures while it looked into allegations the company was failing to pay pharmacists for shifts on time.

We would advise locums to think carefully about booking shifts

Another locum agency, who wanted to remain anonymous, said it has stopped working with Allcures. “We would advise locums to think carefully about booking any shifts with them,” the agency said.

Cheema, who promised to look into any claims “personally and get to the bottom of it as soon as possible”, said there was a “genuine communication error” with another locum, Ruth Eyin, who posted a review on Trustpilot on May 31 this year alleging she had not been paid by Allcures for over two months.

“We have been in touch with her and resolved the matter,” Cheema said. On Team Locum’s claim that Allcures has underpaid locums, he said: “I greatly value our locum community. If the locums in question get in touch with me or my team, I will look into the matter personally and get to the bottom of it as soon as possible. As such, we don’t have any details of the allegations.

“We engage a large number of locums who are a big part of our community of pharmacies and we do our best to ensure all payments go through without a hitch.”