Complaint to Richmond Fellowship

Maggie Hysel
CEO
Richmond Fellowship

enquiries@richmondfellowship.org.uk

Dear Ms Hysel,

I understand your charity made a successful bid to run the Surrey & Borders Partnership NHS Trust's Old Moat Garden Centre in Surrey . As part of the transfer of operations management people with learning difficulties who worked at the garden centre had their therapeutic earnings of £3 a day cut to nothing in order to suit you. .

A parent of one of those workers raised the issue with the local newspaper and MP as I am sure you know. There is also a blog covering this issue here


The Old Moat Grden Centre workers were not meaningfully consulted about what was to happen to them. It appears that the Richmond Fellowship did not want to ' inherit' the 'problem' of dealing with people with learning difficulties because the ' therapeutic work' culture and level of support the workers required was a barrier to the type of employment and training service your organisation wants to run.

These people have a legal right to work under the DWP's permitted work rules yet the Richmond Fellowship and Surrey and Borders Trust and PPI sat down behind closed doors and negotiated that right away.

Would you please explain why you felt it necessary to force people with learning difficulties to work for nothing while your charity is set to handsomely profit from the deal with the Surrey & Borders Partnership NHS Trust?

Lastly, your website does not appear to have a contact e-mail address in the 'contact us' section. It has a contact address for your recruitment section which implies that the Ricmond Fellowship's main priority is to generate employment for its staff. Would you please address this oversight.

Kind Regards, etc.