Category Archives: Inequality

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

19 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Austerity cuts, Economy, Inequality

Chancellor says “there are no unemployed”

“Philip Hammond has claimed “there are no unemployed people” in the UK in a major slip-up as the chancellor prepares to fight for his political life in this week’s budget.

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, Hammond made the gaffe as he argued there had been no need to worry about jobs disappearing due to technological advances such as computers in the past.

Downplaying worries about automation technologies including driverless cars, he said: “It’s a simple choice: either we embrace change or we try to hide from change and we allow ourselves to slip behind … I remember 20 years ago we were worried about what would happen to a million shorthand typists in Britain as the personal computer took over. Nobody has a shorthand typist these days. Where are all these unemployed people? There are no unemployed people. We have created 3.5m jobs since 2010. This economy has become a jobs factory.”

In fact, there are about 1.42 million unemployed people in the UK and many more who are underemployed and would like more hours. .. “

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/nov/19/there-are-no-unemployed-in-uk-says-philip-hammond-tv-gaffe?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

16 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Austerity cuts, East Devon economy, Education (local), Hinkley C, Inequality, Local Enterprise Partnership

Can productivity and growth be increased outside the South East except for Hinkley C?

Our Local Enterprise Partnership’s draft economic strategy is making enormous claims about how much it will increase productivity in Devon and Somerset – its predictions outstripping those of historic precedent and some of the most productive areas of the UK. This in spite of our ageing population and the effects of austerity on skills and training (our LEP’s investment in this sector appears to be limited to training only for Hinkley C nuclear plant).

Our councillors might well examine our LEPs claims with some disquiet:

“… Cities such as Stoke, Blackburn, Mansfield and Doncaster had productivity 25% below the national average, the Centre for Cities said. Raising all parts of the UK to the national productivity average would increase the size of the economy by £203bn – equivalent to Birmingham’s output four times over.

The report showed that cities outside the greater south-east had weaker productivity because they were failing to secure the higher-skilled work of productive sectors and firms.

“Firms choose to locate their high-skilled operations in cities which can offer them access to a high-skilled workforce and other relevant businesses, and will base lower value components in places where land and labour is cheaper,” the thinktank said.

“Barclays bases its high-value banking activities in London and its low-skilled call centre in Sunderland. Similarly, clothing company Asos has a large distribution centre with low-skilled jobs in Barnsley, but its headquarters is located [in London].”

The report said another factor explaining the regional divide was that highly productive sectors and firms made up a larger shares of jobs in cities in the greater south-east than in urban areas in other regions.

On average, cities in the region had a larger proportion of workers in sectors and firms that contributed most to national productivity – in 2015, the information and communications sector made up 7% of jobs in cities in the greater south-east, compared with just 3% in other cities. The financial services industry accounted for 6% of jobs in cities in the region compared with 4% of jobs in cities elsewhere in the country. …”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/16/poor-productivity-outside-south-east-hurting-uk-economy

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

15 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Austerity cuts, Economy, Inequality, Tax avoidance

Comments

5 Comments

“Why do people care more about benefit ‘scroungers’ than billions lost to the rich?”

“Last year’s British Social Attitudes survey asked Britons about their feelings on this issue. Our analysis of this data (with Ben Baumberg Geiger of the University of Kent) revealed that the British public believes tax avoidance to be commonplace (around one third of taxpayers are assumed to have exploited a tax loophole). In moral terms, people seem rather ambivalent; less than half (48%) thought that legal tax avoidance was “usually or always wrong”.

By contrast, more than 60% of Britons believe it is “usually or always wrong” for poorer people to use legal loopholes to claim more benefits. In other words, people are significantly more likely to condemn poor people for using legal means to obtain more benefits than they are to condemn rich people for avoiding tax. This is a consistent finding across many different studies. For example, detailed interviews conducted by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis found that people “tended to be far more exercised by the prospect of low-income groups exploiting the system than they were about high-income groups doing the same”.

This discrepancy is reflected in government priorities. Deep public antipathy towards benefit “scroungers” has been the rock upon which successive Conservative-led parliaments have built the case for austerity. Throughout his premiership, David Cameron, along with his chancellor, George Osborne, kept the opposition between “hardworking people” and lazy benefit claimants right at the centre of their messaging on spending cuts. Though gestures have been made towards addressing widespread tax avoidance by the wealthy, very little has actually been achieved. This stands in stark contrast to the scale and speed with which changes have been made to welfare legislation.

Will the Paradise Papers shift the public’s focus? The leaks alone are seemingly not enough. The 2016 British Social Attitudes survey was conducted just four months after the release of the Panama Papers. Even then, the British public remained more concerned about benefit claimants than tax avoiders.

…”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/15/benefit-scroungers-billions-rich-paradise-papers-tax-avoidance

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

12 Nov 2017

Posted under

Affordable and Social Housing, Austerity cuts, Developers/ Development, Inequality

“Number of pensioners living in rented homes may treble by 2035”

Of course, rich people will be able to afford flats in PegasusLife developments – with annual service charges higher than most people’s annual rents.

“Almost 1 million pensioners could be trapped in the private rented sector in 20 years, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation from rogue landlords, according to a renters’ rights campaign group.

There are 370,000 pensioner households currently paying rent to private landlords in the UK.

But campaigners expect that figure to almost treble to 995,000 by 2035-36 if housebuilding remains at current levels.

The Generation Rent campaign group has warned that these pensioners will be forced to rely on housing benefit to cover their rent, which will then pile pressure on the welfare budget.

New research from the lobby group also revealed that older renters are more likely to prefer secure tenancies with rent controls and tenancy guarantees.

Dan Wilson Craw, director of Generation Rent, said: “With most debates on housing focused on young adults, politicians risk neglecting the vast numbers of people who are already too old to get a mortgage and face a lifetime of renting.

“As they start retiring in greater numbers, the state will have to pick up the tab unless it makes some fundamental changes to the housing market.

“The answer is not further cuts to housing benefit, because that will only further immiserate people who have nowhere else to turn.

“Instead, we need years of investment in new homes to bring down rents and a transformation of the private rental market into a professional provider of long term homes.

“This means giving tenants protection from unfair evictions and putting a limit on rent rises.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/11/number-of-uk-pensioners-renting-homes-may-treble-by-2035

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

11 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, DCC, Democracy, East Devon Tories, EDDC, Inequality, Local Enterprise Partnership

EDA Councillor Shaw: “Pursuit of elusive ‘devolution’ deal is leading to a new layer of bureaucracy: an unelected, one-party ‘Heart of the South West’ combined authority”

“This week’s DCC Cabinet meeting approved a Conservative proposal to set up a formal Joint Committee with Somerset (report at item 7 of the agenda). Objections were raised to aspects of the proposal by the leaders of the Liberal Democrat and Labour groups, and I spoke on behalf of the Non-Aligned Group (which comprises the three Independents and one Green councillor). You can watch the debate, and read my speech below:

“I think we know what is going with devolution. We have a government which is ripping the heart out of local government spending, pushing services to the border of viability; this is causing enormous difficulties for this council but also driving down local incomes and so weakening our regional economy. But at the same time it is holding out the carrot of giving us limited extra powers and returning a modest bit of the lost funding, if we jump through its ‘devolution’ hoops. The government barely seems to know what it’s doing over ‘devolution’ and the hoops keep changing, but we still have to guess what they are and do our best to jump.

And so we end up with the papers in front of us today. We are asked to endorse a ‘vision’ of higher productivity and economic growth and create an extra layer of bureaucracy to support it. The problem is that the vision bears little relation to reality. The ambition is to double the regional economy in 18 years, i.e. to increase its size by 100% – this requires a compound growth rate of 3.94%. In the real world, the actual growth rate in the SW over the last 18 years has been 30% and the annual rate 1.47%. Nationally, the UK economy has never grown by more than 3% p.a. in any of the last 18 years, and is currently veering downwards below 1.5%.

So we are asked to believe that we can increase local productivity growth from below the national average to well above it, and thereby buck not only regional but also national growth trends. How are we going to that? By waving the wand of the Hinkley nuclear white elephant and hoping that it somehow spreads some stardust over Devon? I can tell you that so far the LEP has produced almost nothing which offers help to the economy in the rural, small-town, coastal Devon which most of us represent.

Let’s take a reality check – if I come to the budget meeting and tell you, ‘the economy will grow by 4%, business rate receipts will shoot up, so spend, spend, spend’, you are going to look on me as a madman, and rightly so. So why should Devon County Council buy this phoney prospectus? And why should we embark on radical constitutional change to support it?

I know this is only a proposal for a Joint Committee, with limited financial implications. But it is clearly presented as enabling us to ‘move relatively quickly to establish a Combined Authority’ if that is deemed necessary. We already have 3 tiers of local government. This is the beginning of creating a fourth tier, without a mandate, without elections, and without balanced political representation.

95% of the people of Devon don’t even know they’re living in something called the ‘Heart of the South West’. It says everything about the lack of democracy in this so-called devolution that we are using this PR-speak rather than the county names which people understand. I know the Government prefers cross-boundary devolution projects, but Cornwall got a stand-alone deal, and we are much bigger in both population and area.

Apart from Hinkley there is no strong reason for us to tie ourselves to Somerset rather than Cornwall or Dorset. Our local government is being distorted to support an anachronistic nuclear project – for the benefit of companies owned by the French and Chinese states – instead of developing renewable energy for which we have a good basis in the SW.

I have this Cabinet down as a group of a level-headed people. But here we have fantasy economics, making claims which are about as credible as the figures on Boris’s battlebus, and constitutional change which means that Devon people and their councillors are asked to start handing over democratic control to a one-party quango in conjunction with unelected business people.

Since the Government is always changing its mind about devolution, there is no reason why we shouldn’t change our minds too. I ask you to

go back to the Government with a realistic agenda for Devon, that addresses the needs of all areas of the county and all sectors of our economy and society
back off from this unnecessary proposal for a joint committee.

Pursuit of elusive ‘devolution’ deal is leading to a new layer of bureaucracy: an unelected, one-party ‘Heart of the South West’ combined authority

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

10 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Affordable and Social Housing, Austerity cuts, Developers/ Development, Inequality, Planning System

“Fewer social homes being built than at any time since Second World War, official figures reveal”

The article says the Government is concentrating on “affordable homes”. Affordability is calculated at offering a discount of 20% on the average price of other houses on a development. So, if the development has an average cost of £300,000 an affordable home (smaller and usually sited at the least attractive part of a development) would be £240,000. There is no such thing as a private “affordable rent”.

Social housing is built and controlled by councils or housing associations and rents are lower than in the private sector.

“Fewer social homes are being built than at any time since the Second World War, new official figures have revealed.

Government data shows just 5,380 new social homes were completed across England last year – down from 6,800 the previous year.

The number has plummeted from 39,560 in 2010/11 – the year the Conservatives came to power. …

… Responding to the latest figures, Labour said immediate action was needed. John Healey MP, the party’s Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, said: “After the Grenfell Tower fire Theresa May admitted the Conservatives haven’t given enough attention to social housing. These shocking figures show she was right.

“The number of new social rented homes being built is now at the lowest level on record, and the number of new low-cost homes to buy is at just half the level it was under Labour. After seven years of failure on housing the Chancellor must use the Budget to tackle the housing crisis.”

Housing and Planning Minister Alok Sharma said: “These latest figures show progress but we know there is more to do. That’s why we have increased the affordable homes budget to more than £9bn and introduced a wider range of measures to boost building more affordable homes, supporting the different needs of a wide range of people.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/fewer-social-homes-second-world-war-local-authorites-councils-housing-tenants-right-to-buy-a8047011.html

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

9 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Inequality, Sleaze, Spin

Comments

1 Comment

What the Tory council did next after Grenfell Tower tragedy

“The council responsible for Grenfell Tower has been accused of wasting huge sums of money after it emerged it was trying to recruit more than two dozen communications staff to spread the message about its work in the aftermath of the fire.

Kensington and Chelsea council is advertising for as many 28 “communications and engagement professionals” on one-year contracts. With salaries ranging from £26,500 to £49,500, the move could cost as much as £1m….”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/09/grenfell-council-accused-of-wasting-up-to-1m-on-communications-jobs

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

9 Nov 2017

Posted under

Austerity cuts, Inequality

Free child care ? Only if you can find it and that’s not easy

“The chaotic rollout of 30 hours’ free childcare policy hit families in high-rent metropolitan areas the hardest, HuffPost UK can reveal.

Inner London, Outer London, East of England and the South East suffered most from the botched policy launch in September, with as many as 40% of parents unable to access the free childcare promised to them by Theresa May.

Cities in the Midlands and Yorkshire were also left with a vast shortage of places, with cash-strapped providers telling the Government they would have to charge for a place or face running at a loss.

The Government has also admitted 10% of eligible families across the country were still unable to access free childcare today, more than two months on from the policy’s launch.

Labour’s shadow early years minister Tracy Brabin MP said: “This is yet more evidence that the Government’s 30 hour free childcare policy is seriously under-funded, something that is being felt particularly starkly in areas where property costs are typically higher. …”

https://t.co/zb5RdUQ5Gz

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

8 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Austerity cuts, Health and Social Care (local), Inequality, Privatisation, Scrutiny, Tax avoidance

“Private equity firm made struggling care home operator take costly loan”

“Britain’s second biggest care home operator was made to borrow money through a very expensive loan from its private equity owner in a deal designed to extract £890m in cash from the struggling business.

The disclosures are likely to raise fresh concerns over the future of Four Seasons Health Care, which operates more than 300 care homes across the UK, and has been drowning in debt.

Described in reports as teetering on the brink of ruin, Four Seasons has been hammered by cuts to council care budgets brought on by years of austerity. This month, its private equity owner, Terra Firma, will plead with lenders to approve a financial rescue package.

However, filings in the tax haven of Luxembourg and data from the Paradise Papers reveal how Terra Firma hoped to make a vast profit from the business after acquiring it in 2012.

Four Seasons was made to borrow £220m from Terra Firma subsidiaries. The repayment terms were huge – 15% interest a year, on a compound basis, over 10 years. By 2022, when it was due to be repaid, Four Seasons would have owed its controlling shareholder four times the original sum.

The debt was later written off because of the financial struggles at Four Seasons. However, the bond stated a nominal repayment value of £890m. The intention seems to have been to extract profits from any future sale of the business largely tax-free – a manoeuvre that will raise concerns about whether buyout groups are suitable owners for businesses that form a key part of Britain’s care infrastructure. …”

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/08/private-equity-terra-firma-care-home-four-seasons-loan

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

7 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Affordable and Social Housing, Austerity cuts, Developers/ Development, Inequality

120,170 English children live in temporary accommodation

“It is an “abuse of human rights” that in the sixth richest economy thousands of people are living in “Dickensian conditions”, David Lammy has said.

An astonishing 78,180 households are living in temporary accommodation (TA), such as hostels and BnBs, and that means 120,170 children do not have a permanent home, MPs heard during a debate in Parliament on the “hidden” epidemic.

The Tottenham Labour MP hit out at the dearth of social homes in the country and voiced anger that a measly ten social homes were built in Grenfell-hit Kensington and Chelsea with council cash since 1990.

“Over the years, I have heard horror stories (about TA) of needles found in stairwells, of children sharing bathrooms with strangers, of vulnerable women being abused and exploited – and in the end this story comes back to a chronic problem of a decimation in our social housing,” he said.

A Local Government Association analysis found as much as £2m-a-day was being spent on TA by councils, amounting to around £2.6 billion in the past three years.

Siobhain McDonagh, Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden, who secured the debate, said: “Perhaps the most visible indication of the broken housing market is the thousands of people sleeping on our streets, but the homelessness crisis this country faces is far greater, and it is hidden.

He went on to say two families in his constituency had been living in TA for more than 10 years.

“Temporary accommodation is becoming permanent accommodation,” he said.

He hit out at the sale of social housing under the right-to-buy scheme and said just 1,102 social homes were built with government money in England since 2016, adding: “The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea – the borough that has been at the centre of the Grenfell storm – built just ten new council-funded social homes since 1990.”

One in ten households have been in TA for more than five years and for some families in the London boroughs of Harrow and Camden the period was as long as 19 years.

More than 28% of households in TA were housed outside their local authority area, an increase of 248% between March 2011 and March 2017.

Labour MP Frank Field branded the movement of families “worse than the Poor Law”.

He said: “In the Poor Law you were sent back to the village they thought you came from, under these rules you’re sent to any old village or city aren’t you, providing the local authority can actually dump families on them.”

Wes Streeting said youngsters in cramped TA in his constituency of Ilford North were experiencing mental health problems because of the conditions.

One mother lived in one room in a hostel with her 15-year-old daughter.

“Her daughter was preparing for her GCSEs but was having to revise for her exams and do her homework under the duvet with a torch at night,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking to see families live in those kinds of conditions.”

Streeting was also approached by an 11-year-old boy for help during a school visit, he said.

“I went to the head teacher’s office and I met with him,” he said. “The reason he wanted to see me, he said ‘you grew up in a council flat, didn’t you? Can you help me and my mum and my two brothers, because we currently live in one room in a hostel’.”

He added: “This country is going backwards not forwards, and it is simply intolerable.”

Bob Blackman, Tory MP for Harrow East, said many households struggle to scrape together a deposit for a rented property but that 32,000 families in England could benefit if the Government invests £31 million a year into a project to help.

He said such a scheme could save the temporary accommodation budget £1.8 billion over three years.

Housing Minister Marcus Jones said the Government was making progress on getting people out of TA but was “not complacent” and had set up a homelessness reduction task force to tackle the issue.

“The quality of TA is of course extremely important,” he said, saying councils had a legal duty to provide good housing.

“We are committed to ending rough sleeping and reducing homelessness overall and we are therefore setting up a homelessness reduction task force,” he added.

In October, Theresa May announced a £2bn pot of grant money to build affordable housing, stating councils and housing associations can bid for the cash to build, and in areas with high rent, the homes can be social rent, rather than “affordable” rents, which can be up to 80% of market rent.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/david-lammy-dickensian_uk_5a01de30e4b066c2c03a73d7

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

7 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Austerity cuts, Inequality, NHS (local)

“NHS cannot continue ‘in red zone’, providers’ leader warns”

“Hospitals in England are spending £900 less per person than Germany, an expert has warned.

Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, a trade association that represents acute, ambulance, community and mental health services, said the argument for additional funding for the health service was clear as he warned that it could not continue to operate in the “red zone”.

He said UK health spending needed to be about 13% higher to match German or French levels.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the UK spent £2,777 per person on healthcare in 2014.

Speaking at the NHS Providers conference in Birmingham, Hopson described the effects of the NHS being in the middle of the “longest and deepest” financial squeeze in its history.

He pointed out that last year, the NHS in England had missed all four major targets – the four-hour A&E standard, the 18-week elective surgery waiting time standard, the expectation that cancer patients would begin treatment within 62 days and the ambulance response time target.

Hopson added that the NHS could no longer meet performance standards on current funding levels. He also warned that the health service was “slipping back” on improvements made throughout the 2000s.

“The simple point is that if we want the best care, we have to pay for it. UK health spending would need to be around £24bn, or 13% higher, to match current German or French levels of health spending,” Hopson said.

“If we wanted to spend as much per head of population as the French do, we’d need to be spending £300 a year more per person. To match the Germans, we’d need to be spending £900 a year more per person. Sobering figures which show that, in the end, as my Dad used to say, you get what you pay for.”

Hopson added: “We are now trying to run the NHS above its sustainable limits, well into the red zone … and [there is] a growing, tangible frustration that the hard-fought gains of the 2000s across a range of measures – for example, waiting times and single-sex wards – are starting to slip back at increasing pace.”

He said the NHS budget and staff numbers were growing, but they were not keeping up with demand and to meet performance standards.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/07/nhs-cannot-continue-in-red-zone-providers-leader-warns?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

7 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Austerity cuts, Economy, Inequality, Tax avoidance

Comments

1 Comment

‘Paradise Papers: Theresa May refuses to promise register of offshore trusts’

Offshore investing allows companies to avoid paying tax in the UK and is not illegal. Theresa May says she does not intend to change this so that it becomes tax evasion, which is illegal.

One can only assume that her investment banker husband has given her his professional advice.

Though:

“After his wife Theresa May, now the British Prime Minister, emerged as the only remaining candidate for the Conservative party leadership, his employer issued a statement saying that his current job does not make him responsible for investment decisions: “he is not involved with, and doesn’t manage, money and is not a portfolio manager. His job is to ensure the clients are happy with the service and that we understand their goals.”
(Wiki)

“Their goals”, right …

Guardian :

“Theresa May has refused to commit to a public register of the ownership of offshore companies and trusts in the wake of the Paradise Papers revelations but said new measures were already creating more transparency. …
… Corbyn called for a full public inquiry into tax avoidance and evasion, as well as a new tax enforcement unit at HMRC.

“Please understand the public anger and consternation at the scale of tax avoidance revealed yet again today,” he told the annual gathering of business leaders. “We are talking about tens of billions that are effectively being leached from our vital public services by a super-rich elite that holds the taxation system and the rest of us in contempt.

“We must take action now to put an end to this socially damaging and extortionately costly scandal.”

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

6 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Austerity cuts, Inequality

Comments

1 Comment

Austerity cuts and working people

“… 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. …”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/06/families-thousands-of-pounds-worse-off-after-years-of-cuts-study-finds

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

3 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Austerity cuts, Education (local), Inequality, Scrutiny

Academy school heads – many paid £150,000-£425,000 a year

“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

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

3 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Austerity cuts, Health and Social Care (local), Inequality, NHS (local), Privatisation

“Jeremy Hunt faces legal action over attempts to ‘Americanise’ the NHS”

“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.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-hunt-health-department-nhs-legal-action-americanise-privatisation-customers-id-pay-a8033986.html

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

3 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Affordable and Social Housing, Austerity cuts, Inequality

“Government housing benefit cut is making [unaffordable rent] homelessness worse, councils warn”

“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. “

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-housing-benefit-local-housing-allowance-renting-properties-homes-homelessness-lga-a8034786.html

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

2 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Affordable and Social Housing, Austerity cuts, Consultation, East Devon Tories, Inequality, Sustainability

“How a city is tackling poverty by giving a voice to its poorest citizens”

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

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

2 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Asset Management Group, Asset sweating, Austerity cuts, Developers/ Development, EDDC, Inequality, Local Enterprise Partnership, Privatisation

“Councils embracing commercialisation, says survey”

Do you agree that your council tax should fund EDDC as a “commercial enterprise”?

Bear in mind as you think about this and read below, its HQ move has gone up from “cost neutral” to the most recent estimate of around £10 million.

And ask yourself: how many of our councillors (town, district and county) would you trust to run your local sweet shop? And is this all academic anyway when increasingly the purse strings are being controlled by our Local Enterprise Partnership?

“Commercialisation has become the most talked about topic in councils this year, with some seeing turnover equivalent to a FTSE 250 company, according to research gathered by Zurich Municipal.

The insurer conducted in-depth interviews with 22 council chiefs across England and Scotland gathering findings into the Why are we here? The 2017 Senior Managers’ Risk Report (link below).

This revealed that many councils are embracing the opportunity to become commercial entities with one council chief interviewed by Zurich admitted to turnover of £1.5bn.

“Commercial income generating projects are the new norm for local government, with some competing against one another to buy and build hotels, harbours, piers, cinemas, university campuses, and science and research parks,” the report – released at the Solace Summit in Manchester yesterday – stated.

Many see the potential for commercially generated revenue to be re-invested in local communities, however, some spoke of the need not to stray to much into private sector disciplines, while others said it should not be pursued at any cost.

However, austerity is still seen as an ongoing challenge, with some councils saying that services cannot be cut any further.

Funding issues are also harming relations with central government, the research revealed.

One council chief executive said: “We need a frank discussion with government. We can’t carry on doing everything we do.”

Rod Penman, head of public services at Zurich Municipal said: “Councils are facing challenges from all sides, and many are employing commercial ventures to mitigate some of the lasting effects of austerity.

“This approach is not without its challenges, however. There is the growing potential for moral and commercial dilemmas at almost every turn, and it is clear that council chiefs are concerned about the long-term relationship between national and local government.”

Another theme to emerge from the study is the perception of councils following the Grenfell fire.

Council chiefs said they felt the tragedy marked a watershed in how local government’s purpose and remit is viewed.

One commented: “The Grenfell Tower disaster means we will take more consideration of community discussions.”

Penman added that councils needed to “improve the narrative” about the choices they take, especially in a more commercial environment.

“Framing decisions in a purely commercial light simply isn’t an option when the social value of public bodies and services has to be factored in,” he said.”

The full report is here:
http://newsandviews.zurich.co.uk/expert-lab/balancing-priorities-are-councils-facing-an-identity-crisis/

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

2 Nov 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Austerity cuts, Inequality

Comments

1 Comment

“Child poverty in Britain set to soar to new record, says thinktank”

6th richest country in the world fails the most vulnerable and powerless in its society – shameful.

Here is a picture of socialite Tamara Eccleston’s London home decorated for Halloween for her children:

“The number of children living in poverty will soar to a record 5.2 million over the next five years as government welfare cuts bite deepest on households with young families, a leading UK thinktank has said.

New research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts an increase of more than a million in the number of children living in poverty, more than reversing all the progress made over the past 20 years.

The IFS said freezing benefits, the introduction of universal credit and less generous tax credits would mean a surge in child poverty and that the steepest increases would be in the most deprived parts of the country.

“Across all regions, relative child poverty is projected to increase markedly,” the IFS said. “The smallest increases are in the south, but even there relative child poverty is projected to rise by at least four percentage points. The northern regions, the Midlands, Wales and Northern Ireland are projected to see increases of at least eight percentage points.”

The report’s findings, which also predict a widening of the gap between rich and poor and four more years of weak income growth, pose a direct challenge to Theresa May, who arrived in Downing Street pledging to help those “just about managing”. …”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/02/child-poverty-britain-set-to-soar-to-new-record-ifs