“The Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital is to open Britain’s first A&E unit for elderly people in an attempt to avoid them becoming stranded on wards.
It will ask all patients over the age of 80 to go to a separate unit, next to the existing A&E, staffed by geriatrics specialists. …”
Times (paywall)
Of course, they could have gone to specialist community hospitals to take the pressure off A and E – of we still had enough of them.
Who do YOU believe?
“NHS staff in England are working on the “edge of safety” as rising demand is outstripping the increasing numbers being employed, health bosses say.
There are now 6% more staff than there were three years ago, but demand for services has risen by three times as much in some areas.
NHS Providers, which represents health chiefs, said staff shortages was now the number one concern in the NHS.
But ministers insisted there were plans in place to tackle the problem.
Over the past year, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced rises in the number of training places for both doctors and nurses.
The Department of Health said this represented the “biggest ever expansion of training places” and would help ensure the NHS had the staff it needed. …”
“I feel very strongly about the principle of the green belt, because if you take away this cordon of green space and cleaner air around big cities, I think you have the danger of massive ribbon development. So I am somebody that is very sceptical about building on the green belt. I see that in some cases there are land swaps that go on, where a piece of open space is created somewhere else in return for it. That obviously is a trade off that can be looked at.
But I just think as a society we all need a bit of open space around us. We all value our parks. You don’t go to them every day, but it’s good for you to know they are there and good for everybody else if they want to go and use them. So I am concerned about encroaching on the green belt.”
“Campaigners have applied to the High Court for judicial review over Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust plans to shake up services.
The Hands Off HRI campaign, advised by law firm Irwin Mitchell, is seeking to challenge the NHS Trust’s plans to axe the A&E department at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary (HRI) and replacing the 400-bed hospital with a 64-bed “planned care” facility.
It said the plans would also see a transfer of capacity to Calderdale Royal Hospital (CRH) in Halifax, which would be expanded to have 674 beds.
The group claimed that the costs of the plans were estimated at being more than £300m, proposed to be funded by a Private Finance Initiative.
Yogi Amin, a partner at Irwin Mitchell and the lawyer representing the Hands Off HRI campaign, said: “We believe that the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust has produced a flawed business case, which does not present all the necessary evidence or follow the government guidelines.
“The effect of seeing through these plans could not only be millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money being used, but also the closure of much needed acute local NHS services. Local campaigners and professionals have argued that alternative local options based on the use of existing resources should have been considered as opposed to the current proposed plan which would see hundreds of patients every month transported from the Huddersfield facility to CRH in Halifax.”
A spokesman from Hands Off HRI campaign group said: “This is a long and complicated road that we are taking to challenge the proposed changes to take away our much needed local hospital services in Huddersfield.
“We support the judicial review and we believe that the Court will consider the case fairly. In the meantime we hope that no steps are taken to make any changes to the hospital services.
“The NHS Trust plans are opposed by local people and have yet to receive any funding or full backing from the government, so we do not think that it would be fair to go ahead and move hospital services from Huddersfield to the CRH in Halifax.”
The NHS trust has been approached for comment.”
Oh Lord, government says it is “holding Capita’s feet to the fire”. Would that be the same fire that MP Neil Parish said he was holding the CCG’s feet to, just before Honiton and Seaton hospitals closed?
Not much of a fire, feet rather a long way from it.
“Doctors raise alarm about controversial private company’s plans to overhaul cancer screening
GP representatives have raised concerns about the potential risk of delayed or missed cancer diagnosis from a new IT service being developed to administer smear testing for cervical cancer.
The British Medical Association’s GP Committee (GPC) has written to NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens to highlight the continued failures in key back-office functions from paying doctors to registering patients.
The problems all relate to a major contract for primary care “support services” that are essential to the day-to-day running of GP practices, dentists, opticians and pharmacists.
NHS England decided to contract for a single national supplier and awarded a contract to outsourcing giant Capita, starting in September 2015.
The BMA letter says major problems have persisted since NHS England commissioned the service two years ago, changes the letter says are “putting patients at risk”.
But it warns there are more changes planned for next year.
GPC chair Dr Richard Vautrey writes: “We understand that new systems for both cervical screening and GP payments and pensions are due to go live in July of next year.
“We are very concerned that preparations are not sufficiently advanced at this stage of the projects to guarantee a seamless transfer to the new service.”
“We have no confidence in Capita’s ability to deliver this service,” the letter adds.
A spokesperson for Capita told The Independent that a final date had not been set, but did confirm that a July deadline has been discussed.
They added that the new service was being developed alongside NHS England, NHS Digital and Public Health England.
Capita’s support services website shows it is responsible for updating and operating key elements of the National Cervical Screening Programme.
The programme invites women aged 25 and 64 years for a routine smear test every three years, and health chiefs warned earlier this year that screening uptake had hit a 19-year low. …
… A Capita spokesperson said: “This is a major transformation project to modernise a localised and unstandardised service, which inevitably has meant some challenges.
“This letter does not accurately reflect our involvement and responsibilities in PCSE, nor does it reflect our recent correspondence from NHS England who have recognised the improvements and significant progress being made across services in 2017, which has been demonstrated through improved and increasing customer satisfaction.
NHS England said: “We are holding Capita’s ‘feet to the fire’ on needed improvements”.
“… a couple with two young children, one working full-time and the other part-time on the national living wage, will lose more than £1,200 a year due to universal credit cuts.
Another example given is that of a single parent with two young children who starts work at 12 hours a week on the national living wage and will have an effective hourly wage of £4.18, as opposed to £5.01 before the cuts.
The authors detail the wider penalties for families due to the benefit cuts and other changes, saying those with four or more children will lose more than £4,000 a year overall, or £5,000 if they move to universal credit.
Single parents will be especially badly hit, the report said, with changes to universal credit leaving them on average £710 a year worse off. Parents of children with disabilities will also be disproportionately affected, it adds.
The report said: “The losses are alarming, and will damage the life chances of hundreds of thousands of children growing up under austerity.”
Overall, the study said, cuts to the existing benefit system since 2010 will push 700,000 children into poverty, after accounting for housing costs. The two-child limit for benefit payments alone will put 200,000 children in poverty once the system has been fully extended nationwide, the calculations suggested. …”
A school in England has a class with more than 180 pupils in it as Tory cuts hammer the education system.
Children across the UK are often taught in classes of 100 or more students a Freedom of Information request revealed.
The class of 181 was in a school in Sutton, South West London. It was unclear which subject was being taught, but it was possible it was PE or music.
Shadow Education Secretary, Angela Rayner, said she was appalled by the figures.
She said: “Everyone from the public accounts committee to the teaching unions has warned that Tory cuts will lead to large class sizes – and this admission is yet more evidence that they are right.”
A class in Sefton, Merseyside, had 141 pupils and one in Suffolk had 135. The figures were collected by counting the number of children in each class on a specific day in January this year.
They also showed 10 classes of 70 or more pupils and 52 classes with 50-plus students. At primary school level, there were 14 schools with more than 40 pupils in a class.
The largest primary school class was in Somerset, which had 60 pupils.
Head teachers are calling for more than £1billion extra for education and are linking rising class sizes to the £2.8billion real-terms cut since 2015.
The Department for Education said: “We have invested £5.8billion in the school estate, creating 735,000 places since 2010,
At Harrop Fold School in Salford, the head teacher, Drew Povey, said he had once taught 150 children in a class. “We have taught huge classes in the past, though infrequently, partly to save money on supply teachers.
“I honestly think we are going to see class sizes balloon in schools over the next few years because of the funding cuts.”
Labour made it illegal for schools to have more than 30 pupils in infant classes.
A spokesman for the Department for Education said: “We have spoken to the three schools with the largest class sizes.
“These figures relate to PE lessons and choir practice where it is not uncommon for classes to be taught together.
“The schools’ pupil-to-teacher ratios remain well below the national average.
“We also expect this is the case for many of the other schools reporting larger classes in this data.
“We have invested £5.8bn in the school estate, creating 735,000 places since 2010, and despite rising pupil numbers, the average class size has not changed. In fact, less than 1% of primary school pupils are taught in classes of 36 or more, less than in 2010.”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/180-pupils-one-class-appalling-11473734
Owl wishes it to be known that – unlike Lord Ashcroft, the Queen and the man who owns Everton – it has never had an offshore bank account nor has it had questionable relationships with Russian oligarchs or other dodgy people.
Could our councillors perhaps be made to confirm in their declarations of interest that they have no iffy external sources of income or very dodgy friends in whom MI5, HMRC or the police might be interested?
Templeton, a small village near Tiverton, showed exactly what it thinks of BTs heel-dragging on rural broadband with this effigy on its village bonfire:
Oh dear, more changes to the planning rules… no mention of stopping the Big Four developers from land banking and claiming that each and every development will not be viable, so no affordable housing…
“Chancellor Philip Hammond puts homes at heart of budget”
Construction companies will be boosted by the scrapping of a planned 3.9% rise in business rates
Theresa May and Philip Hammond have agreed a deal to make housebuilding a centrepiece of the budget this month after crisis talks last week.
The prime minister held a “trilateral summit” on Thursday night with the chancellor and Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, in an attempt to cut through cabinet divisions over housing, and agreed there would be new money, reforms to planning and incentives for the construction industry to build homes.
The Sunday Times can also reveal that Hammond will give a boost to companies by scrapping a planned 3.9% rise in business rates, set to cost firms £1.1bn next April. Instead of increasing rates by the retail prices index measure of inflation, the chancellor is preparing for an increase in line with consumer prices, which stands at 3%.
Hammond has ditched plans to offer lower tax rates for young people, after internal Tory polling showed that the idea was not hugely popular with the young and was strongly opposed by older voters.
Sources in the Treasury and Downing Street say the chancellor and prime minister are committed to finding a package of measures on housing which will include more cash, alterations to planning rules and other “supply side” changes to increase Britain’s brick-making capacity and train bricklayers and electricians.
May is still understood to be resisting plans to build on the green belt, which have widespread support from other cabinet ministers. The prime minister’s Maidenhead constituency borders the green belt.
Hammond is reluctant to agree huge new sums and has rejected calls for £50bn of borrowing, but has concluded he will have to find some money.
A senior figure said: “The general election sent some political warning signals, which need to be responded to. We are going to tackle intergenerational unfairness and the obvious dysfunctionality in the housing market.”
The plans have the strong support of Gavin Barwell, the former housing minister who is May’s new chief of staff.
Hammond has privately argued that the construction industry is stretched to the limit and wants to uncork the problems. “We import 100m bricks,” said a source.
“There are not thousands of unemployed bricklayers sitting around waiting to build. We need supply-side reforms as well as money.”
Hammond and May are understood to recognise that they have to signal to voters under 40 that they are on their side, having failed to do so during the general election and the party conference last month.
Any tax rises are likely to be confined to asset-rich older voters and those with pensions. “Raising tax is always difficult, but it depends who you are taxing,” said a senior source.
Hammond is examining plans to provide better transport links around London to make more areas viable commuter towns.
He is also drawing up a package of measures to train young people for the hi-tech jobs of the future and plough money into research and development in sectors such as artificial intelligence and robotics.
The chancellor will also outline plans to improve productivity, which he regards as the most important factor in boosting growth in the years ahead.”
Source: Reuters
It really doesn”t matter what he took the money FOR, what matters is who he took it FROM:
“Steve Baker, a prominent Brexiteer who was promoted to the frontbench after his work with David Davis, took £6,500 from an organisation called the Constitutional Research Council (CRC).
The same group was behind a large donation to Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in the run up to the vote to leave the EU.
The CRC gave £425,622 to the DUP while the referendum campaign was in full swing.
There is very little information on the elusive CRC – they do not have a website, a press team or campaigns team, no membership list and appear not to be registered as a company.
Ben Bradshaw, the former Labour culture minister, has written to Kathryn Hudson, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, asking her to investigate the donation.
In his letter, Mr Bradshaw said there was “strong evidence” the donation did not come from “a permissible donor”.
However, the Electoral Commission would have had its hands tied during the campaign as it is not allowed to publish the names of donors in Northern Ireland.
Mr Bradshaw has previously raised the issue of the DUP with Andrea Leadsom, leader of the Commons. She said: “I share his concern that we need to make sure that all donations are permissible and legal.”
Last night Mr Bradshaw said: “We know a donation from this organisation to the DUP in the EU Referendum was ruled impermissible by the Electoral Commission and the DUP were fined.
“So, it is important the parliamentary standards commissioner can satisfy herself that a similar breach has not occurred here.”
A spokesman for Mr Baker said: “All the steps have been taken to ensure donations are registered and accepted in accordance with the rules, and we are confident that they do so.”
“Earlier this year NHS England issued a diktat ordering hundreds of organisations to rework their publicity materials, claiming that inconstistencies could be fuelling pressures on Accident & Emergency units.
Under the new rules, every trust is told to place the NHS logo above the name of their organisation, instead of beside it.
Health officials said the move would cost just £23 per organisation, because trusts were told to only make changes when stationery runs out or signs need replacing.
But Freedom of Information disclosures reveal that NHS England spent £81,645 running focus groups and other “research fieldwork” and more than £30,000 on other running costs and analysis. Health officials had failed to provide the information until the Information Commissioner intervened to order the release of the information to the Telegraph.” …
Much of the funding was spent on a market research company which carried out 28 focus groups with members of the public, 1,000 interviews and nine workshops involving 100 communications officials.
The policies were then drawn up by NHS England’s identity team, which has two members of staff on salaries of between £56,000 and £69,000 and £40,000 to £48,000 each.
The exercise attracted criticism from health charities and hospital managers, saying it would divert precious funds and time at a time when the NHS is under precendented strain.
But health offiicals said the rules would reduce “confusion and concern” among the public.
A spokesman for NHS England claimed that inconsistencies in current use of the format could be resulting in “more people inappropriately defaulting to A&E.”
The main change is moving the “NHS” lozenge so it is above an organisation’s name – instead of beside.
Every organisation has been instructed to make changes to online publications by January and to make changes to physical signs when practical.
An email sent to trust managers explaning the rules, sent out earlier this year said: “Patients and the public are seeing the NHS identity in a range of diverse and inconsistent styles. This is creating confusion and concern.”
Research Works, the market research and consultancy firm based in St Albans, holds a string of contracts with the health service and its quangos, including NHS England, the Department of Health, and the Care Quality Commission.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/04/nhs-spent-100000-move-nhs-logo-stationery-signs/
“One of the greatest myths of our time is that public services can be made more efficient if we run them as businesses. The commercialisation of our public services has been a manifest failure, and the response offered by the mainstream parties is that we simply haven’t commercialised them enough. What they fail to understand is that a public service and a business are inherently different beasts and asking one to behave as the other is like asking a fish to ride a bicycle.
The primary aim of a public service lies within its name. This service exists to avoid negative social impacts and protect crucial social utilities from the instabilities of capitalism.
Within living memory it was considered basic common sense that essentials like food, water, energy, access to health services, housing, sanitation and sewage, social care and core manufacturing industries were too important to expose to the volatilities of the free market. Aside from this practical view, there were also two core value statements:
Profit should not be sought from a need to eat, heat a homes, drink water, healthcare or have a roof over their head.
2. Access to such necessities should not be based on an ability to pay.
Public services are democratic and accountable at the ballot box. Important matters like wages, pensions and working conditions are the result of negotiation and subject to internal and popular support.
Public services are funded by public money and managed by public representatives working together to deliver social utility. Every penny recycles within the public economy.
Neoliberal Capitalism is inherently unstable, creates inefficiencies and gaps in supply and demand, and does not create full employment. For these three reasons, critical services must be independent of capitalism, commercialisation and profit. In short, they must be universal and eternal.
This is the purpose of a public service.
A business, on the other hand is a commercial entity. The primary responsibility of a business is to create a profit for its shareholders. A corporation may well have other aims, but all must be subservient to this primary aim or the corporation will cease to exist, or be taken over by another corporation.
A business is not a democratic organisation. They are hierarchical, and wages, terms and conditions, are set by the executive and subject to the market forces. This can be mitigated to some degree by collective bargaining through unions, but workers in the private sector has historically delivered lower wages and reduced working conditions for the bulk of its employees.
Of the 23 million UK workers in the private sector, just 3.2 million (13.9%) have a workplace pension. Of the 6 million public sector workers, 5.3 million (88%) have a workplace pension.
Public sector employees are paid on average between 7.7% and 8.8% or £86 a week more than private sector workers. More significantly, this is a twelve year high in the wage gap, as private sector wages continue to fall in real terms.
The pay gap between the private and public sector is nothing compared to the pay gap within the private sector. Unlike the public sector where wages are clustered around a midpoint with a small proportion of very high and very low wages, the private sector has a great wage differential between its lowest and highest earners. Women are also paid a far higher average wage in the public sector, while constituting the bulk of the lowest paid workers in the private sector.
The public purse is picking up the bill for the wage and conditions gap in the form of large increases in state benefits paid to working people. As the current government remove these compensations, the failure of businesses to pay a living wage, together with clear provision for old age and care needs is exposed.
The privatised energy market has provided six energy giants, who dominate the market and have continued to deliver above inflation price rises whilst making record profits each year. The UK now rests at the very bottom of the league tables, with the worst fuel poverty in Western Europe.
The privatised railway is an example par excellence of total lack of accountability for failure to deliver. The rail service is, as always failing to raise sufficient ticket revenues to turn a profit. Ticket prices are rising above the rate of inflation. Train firms give the government £1.17bn in premiums to run their franchises, only for the government to hand them back £4bn in subsidies. So, instead of spending £140m in 1960’s money for a fully nationalised service where costs were kept low. We are now spending almost £3bn a year today simply to fund the profits of private companies. Network Rail profits doubled in 2012, and all rail franchises are running at a profit as the companies prioritise (as they have to, as businesses) making a profit rather than lowering ticket prices or investing in the network. Despite all this, the government are not complaining as they were when the service was nationalised, of a loss making service.
The move away from a social housing policy during the Thatcher government and continued since has been a disaster for housing. We are building 100,000 homes a year less than we need because the housing supply has been almost entirely handed over to the private sector to manage. The National Housing Federation issued a report last year which showed Housing Benefit has doubled in recent years as a direct result of an astronomical increase in housing costs. The report shows an 86% rise in housing benefit claims by working families, with 10,000 new claims coming in per month. House prices are now 300% higher (in real terms) than in 1959. If the price of a dozen eggs had risen as quickly, they would now cost £19. Rents across the UK have risen by an average of 37% in the UK in just the last three years.
The list could continue to include care, employment support services and a litany of other failed attempts to commercialise public services. The project is doomed.
There is No Such Thing as a Loss Making Public Service
If a business fails to recoup the costs of providing its service in money, it is described as running at a loss. This language of business is now being applied to our public services. When Dr Beeching dismantled the railways in 1963, the narrative then and now was that the rail network was losing £140m a year. This is commercial speak. This means the gap between ticket revenue and costs to run the service was £140m. If the railway was a business, this would be a loss. But it was a public service. A well-funded, serviceable, cheap at the point of use railway service was and is an important social utility. We need to be able to get our people around to work, to keep connected to family and friends, to transport goods up and down the country. So we all pitch in taxes and through an economy of scale we run a cooperative service. Unless someone is stealing, defrauding or otherwise ‘disappearing’ public funds, then there is no such thing as a loss making public service. The gap between ticket revenues and running costs in this case could have been entirely expected, since the priority was accessibility and maximum utility of the service. This idea is anathema to business.
[the paper goes on with more examples] …
… We have now reached the stage where enforced accountability of Politicians and those in Public Office is warranted on the grounds that patients are being injured and avoidable mortality is escalating in an NHS that has been engineered to fail. The preservation of Parliamentary Democracy may depend on the ability to make public figures accountable in the Courts.
We need to understand that there is a difference between the provision of healthcare and the causation of personal injury. The Health and Social Care Act 2008 cannot protect the Government from Criminal Negligence and causation of physical harm to patients. There can be no Nuremburg Defence by Government Officials and Agencies in relation to avoidable injuries to patients.”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nhs-trainwreck-funding-public-service-ninian-peckitt/
“… Whatever the grim necessity of these [sexual harrassment] revelations, they contribute to a sense of decline and institutional failure, and thus to an increasingly dangerous lack of trust.
But the rot in Westminster goes beyond alleged sexual harassment, to other forms of subversion that have yet to be exposed. As May prepared to go to the House of Commons for the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions, there was a very significant development in the continuing but almost unnoticed investigations by a handful of journalists—most operating outside the mainstream media—into the financing of the Vote Leave campaign in 2016.
After inquiries led by the independent media outlet OpenDemocracy, Britain’s Electoral Commission announced an investigation to see whether an insurance entrepreneur named Arron Banks broke the law by allegedly channeling $11 million in loans and gifts to a campaign for the U.K. to leave the E.U. (Banks, in response, tweeted, “Gosh I’m terrified.”)
The source of the money is somewhat of a mystery. OpenDemocracy, led by editor Mary Fitzgerald, carried out an analysis by Iain Campbell and Alistair Sloan of Banks’s financial affairs that allegedly showed he was not nearly as rich as he claimed, and suggested the $11 million came from elsewhere.
Some suspect the source is Russia, whose dark money has allegedly been used to fund operations of destabilization across Western democracies.
While Labour MPs Chris Bryant and Ben Bradshaw have consistently promoted the need for scrutiny on this and other possible Russian influence, Banks mocked the idea. “Allegations of Brexit being funded by the Russians . . . are complete bollocks from beginning to end,” he said. Meanwhile, his representatives tried to menace OpenDemocracy. “Make sure you get it right—it’s clearly a political hatchet job and our lawyers will take action if you get one bit wrong,” read a recent e-mail to Fitzgerald.
The Russian ambassador to Britain, Alexander Yakovenko, was quoted on the Russia Today site as saying the story was “outright insulting for the British government and the British people,” which is not, if you read it carefully, a categorical denial.
There are two other big concerns about the influences on the Brexit vote, which are equally important yet still ignored by the largely Brexit-supporting press and—more shockingly—by the BBC.
In this respect, Britain differs radically from the United States, where media and institutions have taken seriously their duty to hold the Trump administration to account on possible Russian involvement in the presidential election a year ago. In the U.K., there is a kind of chill that surrounds the subject of the E.U. referendum—anyone who dares to doubt that the result was purely the “people’s will” is ignored.
The first area of doubt concerns a donation of $574,000 to the leave campaign from the right-wing Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, which now props up the May government in Parliament.
As OpenDemocracy has revealed, the money was channeled through a secretive group called the Constitutional Research Council (C.R.C.). Because Northern Ireland has special rules to allow donations to be made anonymously, it is impossible to discover whether the money comes from a legitimate source, as defined by British electoral law. But a hint of something unorthodox came when the Electoral Commission levied a fine of $8,000 in connection with C.R.C.’s activities.
The more worrying development, which Britain shares with the United States, is the use of big data and voter targeting on social media by the far right, which is now believed to have been very influential in the Brexit referendum.
Where to draw the line between the activities of the Russians and the far right is difficult because their interests and methods overlap. However, a recent academic study has shown that a network of Twitter bots comprising 13,493 accounts tweeted on the E.U. referendum, only to vanish the day after the vote.
It is hard to know whether these were controlled by Russia or the far right. “Putin’s agents tried to influence the U.S. election,” E.U. chief negotiator Guy Verhofstadt tweeted this week. “We need to know if they interfered in the #Brexit vote too.” (If you want a very full explanation of this new peril, it is worth reading the research in full.)
Research:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0894439317734157
Source:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/britain-sex-dossier-scandal
“England’s highest earning academy bosses are revealed today in a Tes analysis of 121 trusts identified by the Department of Education (DfE) as paying salaries of more than £150,000.
The DfE last week named the academy trusts that paid at least one individual trustee or staff member more than £150,000 a year in 2015-16. However, it declined to name the individuals or reveal their salaries, despite saying last year that it would do so.
But Tes has used the list of trusts named by the DfE to compile a full list of the highest-paid employees, and their salaries, based on information in academy trust accounts.
Their combined salaries come to more than £21 million, with almost one in five (19 per cent) of the individuals paid at least £200,000 a year, before their pensions are taken into account.
Salaries range from at least £150,000 a year to the £420,000-£425,000 that Sir Dan Moynihan, chief executive of the Harris Federation, is paid.
Sir Dan’s overall package is approaching half a million pounds a year once his pension contributions of £50,000-55,000 are taken into account.
However, many of the academy bosses now earning more than the prime minister are from far smaller trusts, some of which run just one school.
Simon Barber, the principal of Carshalton Boys Sports College, who earns at least £195,000 a year, is one example. Another is Michael McKenzie, headteacher of Alexandra Park School in London, who earns at least £155,000, according to trust accounts.
The extent to which academy trusts are paying large six figure salaries comes amid mounting concern over the levels of remuneration of academy bosses.
Earlier this year national schools commissioner Sir David Carter told Tes that having “challenging conversations” about chief executive pay is a “very important” part of the work of the eight regional schools commissioners he oversees.
And in July this year Lord Adonis, who developed the academies policy under New Labour, told Tes, “If I had realised that academy principals or trust chief executives were going to be paid sums in excess of £150,000 when I was a minister then I would have intervened to stop it”.
One of the lower paying trusts is the Inspiration Trust, which had education minister Sir Theodore Agnew as its chair of trustees until September this year. The trust runs five primary schools, seven secondary schools and one sixth form in Norfolk and Suffolk.
Its chief executive, Dame Rachel de Souza, is at the bottom end of the top earners, on between £150,000 and £155,000 a year.
There has been a 70 per cent rise in the number of trusts paying at least one person in excess of £150,000 a year, with 121 academy trusts listed as doing so in 2015-16, up from 71 in 2014-15….”
https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/exclusive-top-earning-academy-bosses-revealed
“Gavin Williamson has been accused of “rank hypocrisy” by the Labour Party for arguing against cuts to local services in his constituency.
Before his promotion this week, Williamson served as Theresa May’s Chief Whip and was responsible for ensuring Tory MPs voted with the government.
But in an articles on his website, Williamson said he campaigned against cuts to the police, fire services, prisons and libraries.
In one post, the South Staffordshire MP’s constituents were told he had “started a national campaign to protect the [local] police station after learning that the facility was being considered for closure”.
And in another press release, the then Chief Whip said he was “was very concerned to hear that Cheslyn Hay Library’s opening hours have been dramatically reduced”.
Jon Trickett, Labour’s shadow Cabinet Office minister, said Williamson’s “commitment to his career advancement appears to be stronger that his commitment to his constituents”.
“As Chief Whip, Gavin Williamson was guilty of rank hypocrisy, whipping Tory MPs to vote for cuts to local councils, police forces, fire services and prisons while railing against them in his local papers,” he said.
“Now that he is defence secretary and a full member of the Cabinet, we expect him to keep his word to people in his South Staffordshire constituency and speak up against these cuts that are destroying their public services.”
Williamson was May’s surprise pick to run the Ministry of Defence after Sir Michael Fallon resigned amid the ongoing Westminster sexual harassment scandal.
His appointment triggered a backlash from some Tory MPs. One minister told HuffPost UK it was an “appalling appointment” and another said Williamson was a “real slimeball”.
In further posts on his website, Williamson said he had “campaigned against proposals to close Fire Stations” in his constituency.
And he said in September that prisons needed to “have the right resources to maintain order” and “sentences should be extended considerably” following disruption at HMP Featherstone and HMP Oakwood near his constituency.”
“Exclusive: Senior health professionals and campaigners have now come together to take legal action and demand a judicial review
Legal action is being taken against Jeremy Hunt and the Department of Health over their proposals to restructure the NHS, The Independent can reveal.
Plans have been tabled to convert the NHS into a public/private enterprise, which critics say is based upon the US private health insurance-based system.
Senior health professionals and campaigners have now come together to take legal action and demand a judicial review, to ensure full parliamentary scrutiny of the proposals.
Under NHS England’s new plans, the boundary between health and social care would be dissolved and new systems and structures would allow alternative funding sources, ultimately leading to the creation of new healthcare overseers called Accountable Care Organisations (ACOs).
ACOs would permit commercial, non-NHS bodies to run health and social services. They could be awarded huge contracts to manage and provide whole packages of care, allowing the ACOs to either provide the NHS service themselves or sub-contract it.
Solicitors representing prominent NHS campaigners have now contacted Mr Hunt to inform him that they are seeking a judicial review in an attempt to ensure parliament can fully scrutinise the proposals.
They claim the Department of Health’s consultation process was limited, inadequate and unlawful due to the lack of national consultation or parliamentary approval.
Dr Colin Hutchinson, Professor Allyson Pollock, Professor Sue Richards and Dr Graham Winyard are all working together to put the case to the Department of Health.
Prof Pollock, a BMA council member and co-author of the NHS reinstatement bill, said the proposals were an attempt to Americanise health care in England and that the NHS was progressively being dismantled.
“Our NHS has been an international model for countries around the world for a health system that represents fairness, efficiency and freedom from the fear of illness. It has provided health care for all free at the point of delivery through public funding, public ownership and public accountability,” Prof Pollock told The Independent.
“Its popularity has endured since 1948 and is a symbol of all that is decent about Britain. However it is being starved of funds and progressively dismantled and replaced with corporate structures known as Accountable Care Organisations which will facilitate the introduction of American-style healthcare systems.
“These latest proposals are the tipping point in steps towards the Americanisation of England’s health care.
“We call on everyone to support this legal action against the Secretary of State for health to ensure proper national public consultation and full parliamentary oversight and scrutiny,” she added.
A Department of Health spokesperson said: “It is completely inaccurate to suggest ACOs are a step towards an insurance based system. They have absolutely nothing to do with the funding model of the NHS, which will remain a taxpayer-funded system free at the point of use, and are simply about making care more joined-up between different health and care organisations.
“It is irresponsible to scare vulnerable patients with these type of misleading allegations.”
The news comes as NHS bosses reportedly issued a “cry for help” after years of funding cuts.
NHS and social care leaders have written to Chancellor Philip Hammond to demand an increase in the pace of investment and an end to public sector pay restraint.
The heads of groups representing the entire NHS, medical royal colleges and a host of UK charities have co-signed a letter to the Treasury in advance of the upcoming budget.
It follows assessment from regulator the Care Quality Commission (CQC), which said that front-line services are now in a “precarious condition”.
The letter says: “Even if the Government were only to stick to its current commitment, we believe the remaining £5.2bn should not be reserved for the last two years of the Parliament. It should instead be brought forward now to address significant current challenges.”
Clive Lewis MP has endorsed calls for a judicial review and said the plans were an attempt to “erode and meddle” until a US healthcare style system was in place.
“I, like many, feel increasingly alarmed by what is happening to the NHS. It’s perilously threatened. Jeremy Hunt’s reply to me in health questions indicates that he feels he has the right to change fundamental structures without reference to those who work in, use and care about the NHS, without an Act of Parliament and without explaining properly why these commercial organisations are needed and how they will improve care,” Mr Lewis told The Independent.
“He’s wrong. If we don’t stay vigilant the Tories will erode and meddle until they get the US healthcare system they appear to have planned.
“The Labour party conference voted unanimously to oppose ACOs and we must fight Hunt and Simon Stevens [CEO of NHS England] every step of the way until a Labour government can reinstate the NHS as a publicly provided and funded service,” Mr Lewis added.”
“The vast majority of councils believe the freeze on Local Housing Allowance rates for private renters will lead to a rise in homelessness, a survey by the LGA reveals.
It is calling on the Chancellor to lift the freeze in the Autumn Budget.
Cllr Judith Blake, LGA Housing spokesperson, said: “Without addressing the gap between private rents and LHA, the number of homeless families and children that councils will need to house in temporary accommodation will continue to increase, and our hopes to make a success of the Homelessness Reduction Bill will fade. …
The Independent revealed late last year that private renters being evicted at the end of their tenancy is now the most common cause of homelessness, and that the number of private tenants being declared homeless has trebled since 2010. “
Not one UK company is bidding for the HS2 contract. Bidders are from France, Canada, Japan, Spain and Germany:
Can’t see this catching on in East Devon, more’s the pity!
“It’s time to change politics,” says the Mayor of Salford, at a packed meeting of the Truth Poverty Commission in his home city. “Either politics is done to us, or we shape it.”
Since being elected a year ago, Mayor Paul Dennett has been radically reshaping the way things are done in Salford.
Last month he gave care workers a 10.7% pay rise. His town hall has given the go-ahead for seven new library sites at a time when many councils are closing them.
As other parts of the UK face maternity unit closures, the council has stepped in to ‘Keep Babies Born in Salford’ by opening a new midwife-led unit where 300 babies may now be delivered each year.
Salford has also invested £2million into a development company – in order to kickstart building of social housing that won’t fall under the government’s new Right To Buy policy. The company is called Derive – named after a joke involving revolutionary Italian situationists.
All of which looks like a blueprint for a Labour government, or what unashamedly interventionist Dennett calls “sensible socialism”.
The 36-year-old mayor is passionate about using his £200million budget to end poverty , partly because he has never forgotten what it feels like to come up the hard way, through a childhood he describes as at times “horrific” and something “I wouldn’t wish on anyone”.
Scarred by domestic abuse and his younger brother’s fight against leukaemia, he failed his GCSEs and A-levels and by 18 was working in a “sweat shop” call centre.
“I had an interesting journey,” he says wryly, at his offices in Swinton. “I grew up in a family where there was traumatic violence and abuse. My dad became an alcoholic and I struggled at school in my early teens.”
A power station fitter by trade, Paul’s dad went on to manage The Engine pub in Liverpool’s Prescot area, where his alcoholism began. Paul’s mum, a cleaner, ran the pub as her marriage disintegrated.
Later in life, Paul won a place to study International Business at the University of Ulster, where he achieved a first-class honours degree. He went on to Manchester Business school before doing a PhD at Manchester Met, working as a civil servant and then for a utilities company.
Now living in Salford – where he became a tenants’ leader and then a local councillor – as council leader he sees the Truth Poverty Commission as part of a new way of doing politics, with people’s consent.
Based on a model that has been used in Glasgow and Leeds, the Commissioners include people with experience of poverty.
“Consultation usually means organisations telling you about their plans,” says community worker Jayne Gosnall, 54, who is recovering from alcohol addiction. “This is about really listening to people with experience.”
The Commission is independent but supported by Salford City Council, the Mayor and the Bishop of Salford, and facilitated by Church Action on Poverty and Community Pride. It has led to the council bringing in a raft of measures that will transform lives – from waiving birth certificate fees for homeless people to changing the way the council chases debt.
Debbie Brown, transformation director at Salford City Council, says: “We come into these meetings and we hug each other – that’s not what normally happens in council meetings,” she says. “But the other thing that stopped me in my tracks was the City Council being identified as a cause of poverty.
“We heard stories about what it was like for people hiding from council tax collection agents, people being afraid, and that’s not a city I recognise.
“We’re changing a lot already. We’re going back to the personal, identifying people who are struggling to pay and looking again at what we can do.
“We won’t be using bailiffs for those in receipt of council tax reduction and young care leavers are exempt.”
Laura Kendall, 33, a mum of two and a youth worker, suffered undiagnosed mental health problems as a teenager and was placed in care.
“Sharing my story for this project was difficult but very powerful for me,” she says. “I want people to know their voices will be heard, that a child growing up in the care system can have a better chance.
“I’d spent my whole life trying to get people to listen to me and got used to being rejected. This area has been written off so many times but it’s full of people with something to add.”
Salford’s mayor is determined to listen. “This is about working-class communities coming together and a spirit of solidarity,” Dennett says. “It’s the spirit of Salford in action.”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/how-city-tackling-poverty-giving-11457050
East Devon Watch 