The stock market-listed recruitment firm Staffline is in detailed talks about a takeover of NHS Professionals even as a pre-election row rages over the privatisation of vital public services.

Sky News has learnt that Staffline tabled an offer on Friday for NHS Professionals, the Government-owned agency which supplies 88,000 doctors and nurses to hospitals across the UK.

Staffline, which acquired the controversial welfare-to-work provider A4E two years ago, is understood to be one of two final bidders for NHS Professionals, which is valued at approximately £50m.

Executives at the AIM-listed company are said to be confident of securing a deal.

The proposed sell-off of NHS Professionals comes amid a bitter fight ahead of next month's General Election about the private sector's growing role in the provision of NHS services.


Labour has vowed to "reverse" NHS privatisation, although the party has not specifically pledged to abandon the staffing division's sell-off.

NHS Professionals recorded adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation last year of £9m on revenue of just over £750m, according to sources.

A deal with Staffline or the other remaining bidder is expected to be struck within weeks by Department of Health officials and their advisers.

Staffline, which has a market value of nearly £350m, supplies as many as 51,000 employees each day to more than 1500 clients.

In the public sector, it works with the Ministry of Justice on the provision of probation services and the Education and Skills Funding Agency, which it assists with apprenticeships and adult education.

It's PeoplePlus division is a major partner of the Department for Work and Pensions.

The current NHS Professionals sale process - codenamed Project Florence - is only the latest attempt to part-privatise the staffing agency, following an aborted previous effort.

It follows recent warnings by the head of NHS England about cost savings required by the NHS.

Insiders said that parties including Hays, the recruitment agency, Healthcare Locums and Serco, the outsourcing giant, had all attended presentations made to potential bidders, although none are thought to be in the final round of the auction.

In a written statement last November, the health minister Philip Dunne said: "The Department of Health has concluded that [NHS Professionals] requires significant investment to enable it to expand, so it can deliver improved services to even more NHS trusts and reduce their reliance on expensive agency staff - the bill for which is currently £3bn annually, which diverts resources that could be better used for substantive staffing and improved patient care."

NHS Professionals works with only 55 NHS trusts, or roughly a quarter of the total - a figure that Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, is keen to see increase.

Sources said that a stake of up to 74.9% could be sold to the buyer of NHS Professionals, with the Government retaining a minority stake.

Ministers would have "the right to take back ownership of the company in the event of any serious breach of the agreed main objectives", Mr Dunne said last year.

The NHS Professionals sale process is being run by Deloitte, the accountancy firm which agreed to a temporary ban on tendering for new Government contracts following a row over a Brexit memo one its employees produced last summer.

A Staffline spokesman declined to comment on Saturday.