Surrey & Borders Advised to Rethink Garden Centre Plans

Jill Goble sent the following letter to Fiona Edwards , Christine Carter and Declan Flynn.

Dear Ms Fiona Edwards and colleagues,

While our campaign, which can be found at the www.justice4sabtworkers.blogspot.com , welcomes the news that you intend to repay the disabled workers at the Old Moat Garden centre and other Priority Enterprises their £3 a day and apologise for the distress that they have been caused, I do not feel that the recommendations and action plan you propose to improve the situation goes far enough. Neither do I feel that continuing with the plan to transfer the Garden centre into the hands of the Richmond Fellowship is in the best interests of the disabled workers or Surrey and Borders NHS Partnership Trust. I will explain my reasons for these objections in this letter and I will conclude by making suggestions which I believe would go some way towards turning the Trust from being a dinasaur in the area of employing disabled workers to something of a leading light and pioneer in it's anti-discriminatory policies.

Mr Peter Kinsey before he left failed to answer some of my Freedom of Information Act questions concerning the Priority Enterprises accounts. He did say that the Old Moat Garden centre operates at a £150,000 loss but gave me no details on how these figures are arrived at and costed. He failed to give me proper accounts and failed to give me the sales figures. We are told that the Old Moat Garden Centre operates as a commercial enterprise and it looks like a large, well equipped centre with space for the horticulture side of growing plants as well as the retail side for selling plants and garden products. These details can be clearly seen in the aerial photo of the garden centre that we have on our campaign blog.

Mr Peter Kinsey gave me no reasons why the centre is operating at a loss but I have reason to believe that the potential of this valuable resource is not being exploited. For example most sucessful businesses these days open at weekends and at
lunchtimes. They know that this is when the majority of their customers will be able to shop. But the Old Moat Garden centre closes on Sundays and at lunchtimes. This must be losing them a great deal of retail business. In addition most sucessful businesses operate mail order and internet sales but the Old Moat Garden centre does neither. I rang them today to check their service and was greeted by an unwelcoming voice telling me my call could not be taken.

This kind of arrangement is not helpful for an organisation seeking to become profit making.

Other opportunities that could be exploited by the centre include gaining contracts for plants and garden equipment with local businesses including the local Sainsburies supermarket (since Lord Sainsbury is so keen on helping us disabled people with learning difficulities and mental health disabilities).

My point is that although we are told that the Old Moat Garden centre is a commercial organsiation no real attempt is being made to run it as a sucessful and profitable going concern. The blame for this cannot be laid on the disabled workers who have no employment contracts and a derisory £3 a day which was cut to nothing for their hard manual labour and your management team should take responsibilty for this problem.

With a more dynamic and businesslike approach the garden centre could be turned around to become a highly sucessful profitable business. This in turn would create real jobs with real wages and employment contracts for the disabled workers. At the moment it seems to me you are able to blame the fact that the place 'helps' disabled workers on the lack of profitability. But it is certainly not the disabled workers fault that the place is being managed so badly. The disabled workers are not the ones who have decided to close the place at lunchtimes or not to do mail order or internet sales. These decisions are in the hands of the salaried managers who it seems to me are doing a very bad job. If they were in a real commercial business they would be out of work because they would have gone bankrupt on £150,000 losses.

In your recommendations to the Board which we have up on the campaign blog it seems to me that you also fall into the trap of seeing the disabled workers as a 'potential liability' rather than as assets to the garden centre. There they have been year in year out working hard for only £3 a day without complaint but the Richmond Fellowship or whichever external provider you have lined up to take over wishes to run the place without rewarding the disabled workers for their hard labour at all let alone create any new real job opportunities for them. We have found that the Richmond fellowship will not answer our queries concerning their plans for the garden centre but our understanding is that they plan to run it as some kind of training centre. Well there are already plenty of training and voluntary work type placements available for disabled people but what disabled people are really short of is real job opportunities. The following quotes are from government documents showing the problems disabled people find in the employment market:

Government report accuses charities and public sector of exploiting disabled workers by paying less than minimum wage 03 August 2006 08:05

Public sector and charities flout minimum wage rules when employing people with learning disabilities.

Many employers are paying workers with learning disabilities less than the minimum wage, according to a report.

A "worrying" number of employers – especially local authorities and those in the voluntary sector – are defying National Minimum Wage (NMW) rules by under-paying staff with learning disabilities.

The report, by the Department of Health and the Department for Work and Pensions, warned that organisations faced the threat of costly employment tribunals if they failed to apply the NMW.

"The working group is concerned about the worrying number of learning disability employment providers that appear to be in breach of the National Minimum Wage," the report said.

The government working group on learning difficulties and employment said local authorities needed to work more closely with JobCentre Plus to help more people with learning difficulties find work. By Georgina Fuller

And in another report by the government called

'You can work it out. Best practice in employment for people with a learning difficulty' we see:

As services seek to help people find more meaningful activities than sitting around in day centres, employment is acknowledged as playing a crucial role in people’s lives. But success in getting people in to paid work remains woefully inadequate. Instead , services have created a world based on work for which few people get paid. There is a growing variety of training, social enterprises, work-related projects, work experience and volunteering schemes. There are people who to all intents and purposes are working, but who receive little or no payment.

This is illegal unless there is genuinely no obligation to attend and no obligation to do anything.

There are people who are described as volunteering- this conveniently gets around the issue of employment contracts and payments. These situations are exploitative.’

This guide can be found at a site hosting a Government Guide called Valuing People


In conclusion it seems to me that by handing over the garden centre to an outside provider who have no intention of creating any real jobs for the disabled workers you are failing in your duty to make the best provisions for them or make the best use out of this valuable resource.. The government want more disabled people to work and the evidence I have read says that when disabled people are given the opportunities of having real jobs they more than live up to the challenge. The garden centre is a valuable resource that could be made into a flourishing, sucessful and profitable business which would provide real job opportunities for the disabled workers.This would in turn show Surrey and Borders Partnership Trust to be progressive in the field of anti discriminatory practice towards disabled people.

Turning it into just another training centre is not the best use of this valuable asset and it is not in the best interests of the disabled workers. Given the imagination the garden centre could even be run as a workers cooperative by the service users. I hope very much that you will adapt your recommendations and action plan to take account of the strong need for very anti discriminatory measures in the area of providing employment opportunities for your service users and for the need to
expose the present management at the garden centre for not making it a profitable going concerns that increases the job opportunities for the disabled workers.

I am afraid I will be away next week until the 23rd September so could you please also address replies to this mail to Des Curley who I have cc 'd this mail to so we can have your responses up on our campaign blog. I believe a great deal more negotiation and consideration for the disabled workers best interests need to be undertaken by Surrey and Borders Partnership Trust and we would like to be included in this rather than having our freedom of information requests and questions ignored and delayed as they have been until now.

Finally I would just like to reiterate my strong convictions first that the garden centre, with better management, could be turned into a floursihing profitable enterprise and secondly that this would be in the best interests of the disabled workers as it would provide them with job opportunities that are sorely lacking for disabled people. This plan would also show Surrey and Borders Partnership Trust to be something of a pioneer in establishing good anti discriminatory practices in the employment of disabled people.

Yours Sincerely

Jill Goble


Help us get Justice at:

http://justice4sabtworkers.blogspot.com/