A MUM who raised concerns at management of the GP surgery where she worked has lost her home after being made redundant.

Amy McCrystal, from Blaenavon, was the practice manager at troubled Brynmawr Medical Practice which has now been taken back under the control of the NHS following failings by eHarley Street which ran it from April last year.

The partnership, by doctors J Ahmed and J Allinson, is supported by private firm eHarley Street which manages its back office functions as a subcontractor but according to Ms McCrystal problems with paying suppliers, locum doctors and the taxman became apparent within months of the partnership taking over.

She was made redundant in November after raising concerns with Aneurin Bevan University Health Board in June. She was told redundancy was due to “operational reasons”.

Faced with losing her income just weeks before Christmas the single mum-of-two had to move back in with her mother as she feared she could no longer stay in her rental property in Blaenavon.

“My concern was could I continue to afford my bills as we all live to our means?” Ms McCrystal said:

“My children do outside school activities that all have to be paid for and I started to worry without a permanent job would I fall into debt, which is the last thing I want? The only way out I could see was to give the house up and move back in with my mum.”

Ms McCrystal was directly impacted by problems at the practice and called into the Job Centre last summer and told she needed to find work as issues with staff PAYE tax numbers meant her Universal Credit payments had ballooned, leaving benefits staff to assume she wasn’t working.

“I looked at my statement online and the Universal Credit was something like £1,600 when it would normally be £200 something.

“I was invited to the Job Centre and they said ‘it looks like you need to get into work’. I said ‘you’ve got this all wrong’.”

Ms McCrystal, who is now working on a temporary basis at a surgery in the Rhondda, said staff also discovered pension payments hadn’t been made. She was also concerned at the impact on patients. Failure to pay suppliers saw the centre issuing prescriptions for patients to collect dressings from a pharmacy and bring them back to the surgery to be dressed.

At the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board’s most recent meeting members were updated on how the Ahmed/Allison partnership had voluntarily returned the Brynmawr contract to the NHS, and measures the board is taking to monitor its other practices at Pontypool, Aberbeeg in Abertillery, Bryntirion in Bargoed, and Tredegar.

Ms McCrystal who was applauded by members of the public when she asked the board why it hadn’t intervened earlier said she wanted to thank public who’ve supported her and councillors, and Blaenau Gwent MS Alun Davies, who’d highlighted problems with the practice. She said she is “overjoyed” the practice has returned to the NHS board.The Local Democracy Reporting Service attempted to contact the Ahmed/Allinson partnership for comment.