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Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Fiona Edwards Attempts to Divorce Ceasation of Payments From Legal Requirement for Meaningful Consultation

Jill Goble received the following e-mail from Surrey & Borders NHS Trust Chief Executive Fiona Edwards yesterday.

Cc: des.curley@gmail.com, Christine Carter , Liz Nicholson , Stanley Riseborough , Patrick McCullagh

Subject: RE: http://justice4sabtworkers.blogspot.com

Dear Mrs Gobles

You have asked for information on the following questions:

1. Details of an investigation on national minimum wage legislation at the Old Moat Garden Centre. The Trust is not aware of any investigation being conducted on the national minimum wage, either at the Old Moat Garden Centre or elsewhere. I apologise that the Trust did not respond to this request earlier, but we have been checking that such an investigation is not underway.

2. Details concerning the transfer to alternative providers are covered in the consultation document attached.

Further, you have requested information on the following:

3. The request to transfer work services to an alternative provider has been made by the commissioners of the service, East Surrey PCT and Surrey County Council. As we understand matters, the transfer will continue as requested.

4. Transfer of all services was covered in the consultation document and no further consultation is expected. The decision to cease payments was made by the Trust, whereas the decision to transfer services was made by the commissioners.

I hope this clarifies your outstanding requests.

Yours sincerely



Fiona Edwards
Chief Executive

Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Trust


Fiona , who got Jill's name wrong again - its Goble not Gobles but the freudian slip is interesting - also forgot to point out that the East Surrey PCT has been part of the Surrey PCT since the 1st of October 2006 . Mind you, the Surrey & Borders NHS Trust is in a complete shambles anyway so nothing new there. There are also a number of other outstanding FOIA requests and matters that absent minded Fiona has yet to address.

posted by simply human @ 10:09 am   Listen to this article Listen to this article 1 comments

1 Comments:

At 1:26 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

In the first place I have been on the phone to the Minimum Wage People about this missing investigation and have been told that as a third party I am still not allowed to know any details about the investigation even to the extent of whether one has been conducted or not. However the manager did say that one may be going ahead even if SABP are 'not aware' of it. He said all complaints ARE investigated. They have also taken down all the details a second time and promise that they will be investigated again but still as a third party I am not allowed to know any of the details. I have been given an email address to complain about this situation. The woman who took the details of the second complaint said she also had read about the scandal of how disabled people are not being paid the minimum wage they are entitled to in this country.

As far as the consultation document Fiona Edwards enclosed is concerned this is the Building on the Best Work Services Review published in Jan 2006 and this states that the old moat garden centre will go to MCCH Ltd and not the Richmond Fellowship. Their website address is
http://www.mcch.co.uk/
and they are listed among social enterprises rather than as a charity. That means they have to publish their accounts and I saw they had a turnover of some £23 million for 2005. Their main work seems to be in providing supportive housing projects for disabled people. They do have a couple of work projects and significantly one of these Tuck by Truck is written up in the report 'Paying a Real Wage to People in Work Projects' which was edited by Helen Lockett. So MCCH publish Helen Locketts report and she as project manager sells them the garden centre. Cosy doing business with your friends isn't it...
The Tuck by Truck project does rely on a lot of volunteer labour from the disabled workers which I think is exploitative but they do also employ some of the disabled workers and pay them the minimum wage. They are also very clued up in the report about how to arrange work and paying wages with the complicated benefits legislation.

Anyway I have phoned MCCH and been given the name and number of Sandy Hampson as the project development manager for the garden centre project. I have left a message on her answer phone to ask her to ring me back to discuss whether MCCH will honour the agreement to pay the disabled workers their £3 a day or the minimum wage and generally what their plans are for the centre. I also want to know the timescale for the transfer and whether the promised review of all the disabled workers by Fiona Edwards will go ahead and be completed before the transfer takes place. I also feel that if the disabled workers are found to be entitled to the minimum wage then they may be entitled to large amounts in back pay and the transfer could jeopardise their entitlement to such back payments.

I wonder if MCCH will be any easier to communicate with than SABP have been? If SABP are speeding the transfer through as they seem to be from Fiona Edwards mail yesterday then we have to keep a close eye on what the MCCH plans are althoguh even now I am not sure if the transfer should go ahead given that SABP have all these outstanding promises they made in the board meeting last week like the letters of apology, reinstatement of the £3 a day payments and the promised review of every worker. Will they complete all of these promises before the transfer goes ahead or not?

 

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