Tag Archives: Bristol Holding Ltd

NEW ENERGY FIASCO

Leave a reply

City Leap BE

Anyone heard anything lately about Bristol Heat Networks Ltd, the council company with no business plan and no recorded assets that’s supposed to be managing all of the city’s heat network assets?

The company is supposed to be handed over to Swedish multinational Vattenfall for free as a crucial part of the City Leap deal that will see the private sector decarbonising the city for fat undisclosed fees. A cabinet report in April assured us that “this asset transfer will be sought via a separate cabinet report currently anticipated to be coming forward in June 2022.”

So where is it? What’s the delay? Because without this asset transfer the whole City Leap project, which has cost us around £7.3m in procurement fees so far, goes tits-up. Are those “gaps and financial and operational risks” in relation to Bristol Heat Networks that the council’s Bristol Holding Company execs warned us about back in February still an issue?

Indeed, some people tell us that the city’s heat networks funded by central government aren’t the council’s to give away to a Swedish multinational. Let’s hope that isn’t the case.

After all, we don’t want another Bristol Energy shambles do we?

WORLD OF THE USELESS UPDATE

7 Replies

Keith Barrow: company expert Beardmore didn’t notice he was shagging the auditor!

Congratulations to Nikki “Chocolate Fireguard” Beardmore. She’s ascended Bristol City Council’s greasy pole at remarkable speed to joins the council’s official REALM OF THE STUPID and claim a prized six-figure salary as the fancy-sounding ‘Interim Strategic Director of Resources’.

Ms Fireguard pitched up in Bristol last April as ‘Interim Commercial Director’ for the council and Bristol Holding Ltd – part of Mayor No More Ferguson and Nicola “Lady Gaga” Yates’s bizarre network of UNACCOUNTABLE and FAILING private companies set up with our cash.

Ms Fireguard’s first move was to hand £3million more of our money to the council’s energy reselling business shambles, Bristol Energy, who used it to get themselves 10,000 customers and post an immediate £3million LOSS … Charged to us!

With this success under her belt, Ms Fireguard was immediately promoted to ‘Interim Director – HR, Change, ICT, Communications & Culture’. Here, the great strategist – having overseen a RANDOM and DISORGANISED voluntary redundancy process last year (surely she “led a programme of change using a rapid redesign methodology to drive and deliver major and complex change at pace”? Ed.) – set the council on course to spend £10million this year employing 15 per cent of its workforce on expensive temporary contracts.

Now, just four months into this role, Ms Fireguard has hit the jackpot and has been PROMOTED by the Reverend’s under-powered new Chief Exec, Anna “Big Wedge” Klonowski, to the Counts Louse’s top table and been issued with a long spoon.

Nobody at Bristol City Council bothered to research Ms Fireguard’s CV then? Had they done so they might have noticed that she has a record of, er, APPALLING FAILURE allied to ZERO entrepreneurial skills and a wholesale INABILTY to oversee and scrutinise the work of senior colleagues!

Ms Fireguard’s previous employer was Shropshire Council where she rose to the giddy heights of Director of Resources & Support in 2013. She then got a taste of the really big time in December 2014 when she was also appointed Chief Operations Officer of ip&e, a wholly owned council company notorious locally for continually LOSING MONEY, disliking disclosing information to councillors and the public and trying to UNLAWFULLY DODGE FoI requests!

Somehow things managed to take a TURN FOR THE WORSE on Ms Fireguard’s watch, however, when Shropshire’s council leader Keith Barrow hurriedly resigned as chairman of the board of ip&e in September 2015 after a conflict of interest SCANDAL. Apparently the dubious Tory twit was in a “personal relationship” with one of the auditors he had appointed to ip&e in 2012!

Is this not something a competent ‘leader’ might have noticed while a senior boss at an organisation for all those years? Apparently not. Instead Ms Fireguard sloped off in DISGRACE from Shropshire in December 2015 to enter the world of local government consultancy. Three months later she popped up in Bristol as an expert in local authority trading companies!

Last spring, with the ink still drying on Ms Fireguard’s lucrative consultancy contract in Bristol, ip&e was wound-up in Shropshire as an EMBARRASSING FAILURE. Although we understand there’s an ongoing fraud case at Shrewsbury Crown Court relating to the company and FALSIFIED INVOICES. Another unfortunate incident their expert Chief Operations Officer managed to miss!

To add to the sense of absolute farce surrounding this latest appointment to a senior post in our city, oddly – for someone employed to sort out a crisis hit FINANCE DEPARTMENT – Ms Fireguard is qualified in, er, MARKETING!

Don’t believe the Reverend’s bullshit, hype and spin. The pieces are already falling into place for yet another Bristol City Council financial scandal within the next few years

CITY COUNCIL JOB WATCH

Leave a reply

Austerity you say? Well, there’s PLENTY OF JOBS around at Bristol City Council. So many, in fact, that some managers have to do a lot more than one!

CITY COUNCIL JOB WATCH Yates webStep forward, Chief Exec Nicola “LADY GAGA” Yates who has at least SEVEN jobs. Not only is she the council’s full time chief exec on an income they list as £192k a year, she’s also the city’s electoral Returning Officer – on around £15k a year – and the chief exec of  Bristol 2015 Ltd, the dodgy Green Capital operation, where she trousers £12k a year.

Then she is also the director (on undisclosed money) of FOUR city council run companies – Bristol Waste Company Ltd, Bristol Energy & Technology Services (Supply) Limited, Bristolisopen Ltd and Bristol Holding Ltd.

How on earth does she find the time to run a council? Although she’s not alone. Step forward Alison “FOUR JOBS” Comley, who now earns £136k a year at the council under the overblown job title of Strategic Director for Neighbourhoods.

The work itself might not be too overblown, however, as Four Jobs has time on her hands to doCITY COUNCIL JOB WATCH Comley web another THREE jobs. One of which is the artistic director at Theatre West – an Arts Council funded theatre group – which sounds suspiciously like a FULL TIME job to us.

Then in her SPARE TIME Alison is director of the council’s Bristol Holding Ltd and Bristol Waste Company Ltd on an undisclosed income. You have to sympathise with poor Alison though. Even with four jobs entirely funded from the PUBLIC PURSE she probably has to try and get by on less than Gaga’s £200k plus a year.

How does the poor woman cope?