Daily Archives: 3 Feb 2017

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3 Feb 2017

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Accountability, Health and Social Care (local), NHS (local), Scrutiny, Spin, Transparency

How long is a piece of NHS Property Services string?

New owners of Sidmouth Victoria Hospital under fire for ‘incomprehensible’ answer to rent question.

NHS Property Services (NHSPS) took over 12 East Devon community hospitals on December 1, 2016 – prompting fears from some trustees and representatives over the future of the facilities under a commercially-operated company.

Speaking at a recent Devon County Council (DCC) health and wellbeing scrutiny meeting, Councillor Claire Wright called for NHSPS bosses to be held to account and voiced her frustration at repeated failures to provide the authority with more information.

Cllr Wright asked the company to outline how much each community hospital is being charged in rent, but NHSPS says it is unable to disclose the figures as they remain in commercial confidence while lease negotiations are being concluded.

Cllr Wright said: “I asked for the information in June and I asked again and they said they would get the information and they did not. The answer they have given is incomprehensible.

“A very strong message needs to go back that we have now been waiting seven months for an answer to a very straightforward question and we would appreciate it if they would come to the next meeting because they now own 12 community hospitals across East Devon.”

NHSPS is responsible for managing 3,500 NHS buildings and ploughs any profits back into the health services – selling on property it considers no longer necessary.

Cllr Wright argued it cannot ‘pick and choose’ and, if it is – as claimed – a part of the NHS family, should be held accountable.

Sidmouth fundraisers have vowed to safeguard the future of the town’s hospital, which has undergone a £5million refurbishment paid for entirely by community contributions.

Vice president of the Sidmouth Victoria Hospital Comforts Fund, Frances Newth, said it has received assurance from NHSPS that there should be no noteable changes under the new ownership. She added that trustees have emphasised the amount of community support received in the town and the importance of maintaining it.

Responding to a question from DCC about the amount of rental income compared to figures spent on maintenance, NHSPS revealed its budgeted rental income for 2016/17 is £408 million nationally.

The amount set out for routine, small-scale maintenance in this period is £98 million – which does not include overheads such as salaries of teams carrying out the work – and an additional £60 million is forecasted for larger maintenance projects.

A spokesman for NHSPS said: “The information sent to the council this month was provided further to attending two committee sessions in 2016, where members had the opportunity to question company representatives in person.

“We have provided supporting written information on two other occasions, as requested by the council.”

http://www.sidmouthherald.co.uk/news/new_owners_of_sidmouth_victoria_hospital_under_fire_for_incomprehensible_answer_to_rent_question_1_4874530

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3 Feb 2017

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Accountability, Development Management Committee, Scrutiny, Transparency

Tell the truth and be fired …

“A veteran councillor in Theresa May’s constituency has been sacked after questioning plans for thousands of homes in the green belt.

Leo Walters, a former Conservative mayor of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, was removed as chairman of the council’s housing scrutiny panel after expressing concern that the public had not been fully informed about the threat to the green belt.

He said that he had been removed by Simon Dudley, the council’s leader, after “simply handing out facts”.

Mr Walters had sent an email to his fellow panel members informing them of a Freedom of Information response from the council revealing that 86 per cent of the land that it was proposing for development was in the green belt. …”

Source: The Times (paywall)

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3 Feb 2017

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Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Devolution, EDBF, Local Enterprise Partnership, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Spin, Transparency

Is Trump using the Local Enterprise Partnership model?

This is spookily like the way our Local Enterprise Partnerships (and before that, the East Devon Business Forum) were created – with business people in the driving seat and councils as passengers without seatbelts!

“President Donald Trump met with a roomful of top CEOs at the White House – and says he tried to install other titans of industry on his executive council only to have them nixed as ‘corporate raiders.’

Trump met with a group that included Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink, retired GE CEO Jack Welch – whom he called ‘legendary’ – and other business bigs.

As if that weren’t enough financial firepower, Trump said that he tried to get other financial bigs onto the panel, which meets about once a month to advise him the economy, taxes, and regulations.

‘So many people have called – friends of mine in big business,’ Trump said, ‘and that wanted to be on the committee.’

Billionaire Stephen Schwartzman of Blackstone private equity firm, who serves on the council, acted as gatekeeper. “I said, ‘Steve, can we get so and so?’ Trump said, with the CEOs gathered around him.

‘Nope,’ Schwartzman replied. ‘What do you mean no, it’s big business, massive business,’ Trump pleaded, in his telling.

‘How about this one?’ Trump would ask.

‘He’s a corporate raider, these people don’t want to be sitting with corporate raiders,’ was Schwartzman’s reply.

‘He’s been very very selective,’ Trump said, adding: ‘We’ll be putting a couple more on this.’

Introducing the group, Trump hailed BlackRock investment company CEO Larry Fink for having boosted his personal bottom line through investments.

Trump displayed no reservations about asking some of the world’s most influential bankers about their preferences for peeling back bank regulations enacted after the financial crisis.

‘We have some of the bankers here. There’s nobody to tell me better about Dodd-Frank than Jamie, so you’re going to tell me about it, but we expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank.

The White House billed the event as a strategy and policy forum.
The group’s official title is the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum. It has 16 members.

Absent from the event was Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick, who announced just hours before that he had quit, following pressure from consumers over Trump’s new immigration order.

Trump didn’t mention Kalanick during his public comments.

The Uber boss quit the council, even as the company is facing blowback for its decision to drop its congestion pricing during a taxi boycott meant to oppose the immigration order.

He made his decision known in an email to employees, where he argued against Trump’s new immigration ban.

‘Earlier today I spoke briefly with the president about the immigration executive order and its issues for our community,’ Kalanick wrote. ‘I also let him know that I would not be able to participate on his economic council. Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that,’ he added.

Trump hailed another attendee, his Commerce Secretary nominee, billionaire Wilbur Ross.

‘When I campaigned for office I promised the American people that I’d ask for our country’s best and brightest, and we have that. Wilbur is representing us,’ Trump said.

Trump said of close confidante and business magnate Carl Icahn, ‘Carl Icahn called up and he goes, ‘I heard you got Wilbur. Everybody calls him Wilbur. I’ve never heard him called – we just know him as Wilbur, right?”

Trump met the business honchos as he prepared to sign executive actions asking the Treasury and the Labor Departments to examine reforms to roll back regulations intended to make markets safer and protect consumers.
The actions would examine the ‘Volcker Rule,’ meant to curb speculation, AFP reported.

‘(We) believe that Dodd-Frank in many respects was a piece of massive government overreach,’ a senior administration official told the outlet. ‘It imposed hundreds of new regulations on financial institutions, it established an enormous amount of work and effort for financial firms.'”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4188962/Trump-meets-CEOs-says-ll-slash-bank-regs.html

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3 Feb 2017

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Accountability, Democracy, Scrutiny, Transparency

Trump takes a leaf out of EDDC’s book!

“Public-interest advocacy groups say the White House appears to be deliberately structuring Trump’s growing roster of business-focused advisory groups in order to avoid becoming subject to a federal transparency law that requires such meetings be formally announced in advance and open to the public.

“Whether it’s hastily drafted executive orders put together in the dead of night and riddled with errors and not consulting the pertinent government agencies or putting together other proposals that are shocking to many Americans, nothing that has been done so far has been inclusive, so it’s not a surprise his small working groups of CEOs would be just the same,” said Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen.

A 1972 law aimed at limiting back-room influence by special interests, the Federal Advisory Committee Act, regulates the operation of federal government advisory council. Normally, the meetings of such groups are announced at least ten days in advance in the Federal Register and the sessions are open to the public. Advisory committees are also required to have an official charter, records available to the public and a federal official present during all deliberations. Presidential advisory panels are also typically set up through executive orders.

So far, there have been no official notices of any meetings and no executive orders laying out the duties of the “Strategic and Policy Forum” or any other groups Trump is convening.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-transparency-law-advisory-boards-234583

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3 Feb 2017

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DCC, Education (local)

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Academy schools cherry- picking pupils leaving state-funded schools to deal with the rest

“Councils are bidding for powers to require academies to admit challenging and difficult children, who might have been excluded from other schools.

Local authorities have a statutory duty to provide all children in their area with a school place, yet currently only have powers to direct maintained schools to take so-called ‘hard to place’ children.

If a council deems an academy as the best setting for a particular child, they have to apply to the Education Funding Agency, which makes the final decision. However, according to government statistics cited by the Local Government Association, only 15 out of 121 students put forward to the EFA for an academy placement have been accepted.

“By ignoring local council advice the EFA is allowing academies to effectively choose the children they want to admit,” said Richard Watts, chair of the LGA’s children and young people board.

“There are far stronger safeguards in place to ensure maintained schools do not cherry pick their pupils and the same measures should be in place for all academies.”

Decisions about where individual children are educated should be made in the best interests of the child, not to protect favoured schools, he added.

“It is now vital that councils are urgently given the powers to take these decisions locally, based on their local knowledge of the children, families and schools involved,” Watts said.”

http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2017/02/councils-call-extra-powers-over-academy-admissions