Tag Archives: Overspend

DOG WHISTLE WATCH

Highly paid consultant blames parents and asylum seekers for huge overspends in SEND

Vanessa Wilson
Vanessa Wilson: Interim Director of Racist Scapegoating

Enormous overspends emerging in the council’s SEND budget are not the fault of council bosses squandering money on private sector rip-off artists; spying on parents or paying providers not to deliver SEND services we’ve paid them to deliver.

Turns out, instead, the overspend is the fault of parents and, er asylum seekers. At least, that’s what Vanessa Wilson, a well remunerated management consultant employed on a large undisclosed fee, claimed at a recent council meeting.

“Due to a lack of provision in our area, we’re placing more children in schools out of area. There’s parental choice as well. That’s meant that we’ve seen, in this last year, a doubling in costs of our transport,” she shamelessly explained.

But, as parents are liable for transport costs at a ‘parental choice’ of school, any doubling in transport costs is down to Vanessa’s department’s failures and nothing whatsoever to do with parents.

Vanessa then went after asylum seekers: “We’ve got a large number of children and families coming in who are asylum seekers. We’re seeing an increase in those families where not just the children have complex needs, but also the parents.”

With only 1,500 asylum seekers in Bristol, is it likely this tiny number are responsible for Vanessa’s ballooning costs?

Or is she using them as a convenient scapegoat for her department’s ongoing management failures?

BEACON TIP OFF

Beacon  refurb
Well paid work?

“A mate of mine was involved in the Beacon renovation bid for Balfour Beatty and says it was a total sham. They lost (obviously) and told the council that nobody could possibly fulfill the contract at the requested cost.

“The council ignored them. Then, after agreeing to go with Wilmott Dixon, the council were, mysteriously, “forced to increase the budget” after the contractor had removed the roof of the building!”

The council has now announced a £75m overspend on the project.

THE REVEREND FILLS HIS BOOTS

Beacon  refurb
Beacon: £104m zero-valued refurb

A gushing and not altogether clear media release arrives. From the pen of the massively overspent Bristol Beacon (formerly the Colsunall. Ed) we’re first treated to some introductory corporate word salad about “core values” and “sustainability, diversity and creativity” before the main event. An excitable announcement from the Beacon’s useless management, who have managed to spend £104m on a £54m concert hall refurb project that’s resulted in the venue being valued at, er, zero. 

The big news from this whacko state funded culture gang is that their worthless venue is going into a “corporate partnership” with local TV production firm, Plimsoll Productions. Plimsoll will produce two videos to showcase and “raise awareness of the work done by Bristol Beacon” and they will collaborate with Bristol Beacon on a number of creative projects in local communities. 

What this work might consist of isn’t made very clear. Neither is it very clear how much we’re forking out via the Beacon for Plimsoll’s “expertise in video production and storytelling”. And neither have the Beacon managed to tell us that one of the non-executive directors of Plimsoll Productions is the Reverend Rees. The man signing the £100m cheque for the 1000 seat venue’s inane refurb!

How nice that the Reverend has managed to get himself a paying gig out his own overspent crackpot culture project. No conflict of interest there at all.

THE DIRTY THIRTY: REVEALED

THIRTY Bristol City Council bosses – all members of the ‘Change Board’, responsible for overseeing a council-wide cuts programme – deliberately withheld from councillors and the public a £30 million LOSS in the 2016 – 17 financial year.

Their actions – at the very least – are GROSS MISCONDUCT and they should all be SACKED. Not least because while they were keeping their huge financial loss from us, they were also engineering pay rises for themselves of up to TWENTY PER CENT on the basis of their exceptional ‘TALENT‘!

They may also have committed a CRIME. In what other line of work can you deliberately engage in false accounting and not have committed a serious offence?

Today we name these thirty shameless CROOKS still earning huge sums of money at our expense. And The BRISTOLIAN says THEY MUST ALL GO and GO NOW.

Membership of the change board, December 2015:

Nicola Yates
City Director

Max Wide
Strategic Director: Business Change

Alison Comley
Strategic Director: Neighbourhoods

John Readman
Strategic Director: People

Barra Mac Ruairi
Strategic Director: Place

Lucy Murray-Brown
BWP Programme Co-Director

Becky Pollard
Director of Public Health

Stephen Hilton
Service Director: Bristol Futures

Paul Arrigoni
Service Director: Business Change & ICT

Angela Clarke (Interim)
Service Director: Care & Support Children & Families

Mike Hennessey
Service Director: Care Support & Provider Services (Statutory Director of Adult Social Services) Adults

Patsy Mellor
Service Director: Citizen Services

Gillian Douglas (Interim)
Service Director: Clean and Green

Alistair Reid
Service Director: Economy

Paul Jacobs
Service Director: Education & Skills

Bill Edrich
Service Director: Energy

Julie Oldland (interim)
Service Director: Finance

Mary Ryan / Steve Barrett (job share)
Service Director: Housing Delivery

Nick Hooper
Service Director: Housing Solutions

Richard Billingham
Service Director: Human Resources

Shahzia Daya
Service Director: Legal and Democratic Services

Di Robinson
Service Director: Neighbourhoods

Zoe Willcox
Service Director: Planning

Michele Farmer
Service Director: Policy, Strategy & Communications

Robert Orrett
Service Director: Property

Netta Meadows
Service Director: Strategic Commissioning

Peter Mann
Service Director: Transport

Alison Mullis / Melanie Henchy-McCarthy (job share)
Chief Internal Auditor

Sarah Toy
Chief Resilience Officer

Dominic Murphy
Chief Service Officer for Cities of Service Programme

Got any stories about any of the DIRTY THIRTY? Contact The BRISTOLIAN:

The Bristolian
Box ‘Gurt Shush
Hydra Bookshop
34 Old Market Street
Bristol BS2 0EZ

We consider the security of our confidential sources as very important and will never reveal your identity. However, please take sensible precautions when you contact us.

LEAKED DOCUMENT!!! WHAT THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT BRT!

BRT leak-1

Click to view document

We’ve been LABOURing over this cabinet report LEAK about the financial black hole emerging in the city’s white elephant BRT bus project.

The report that we’re publishing and which has no council managers’ name anywhere near it to take ownership and responsibility for the shambles, lists a series of overspends due to the inflated FINANCIAL DEMANDS of corporate civil engineering firms for work on the Ashton Vale – Temple Meads bus route.

So far, before any work has even begun, costs for works on the Ashton Avenue Bridge; bridges at the Bathurst Basin due to Fergo’s rerouting plans and on the so-called “Cumberland Busway” (Cumberland Road to me and you) amount to £9.12m MORE than was originally budgeted for.

The council’s proposals for covering these losses are equally interesting.

One plan is to shave £2.4m off the budget by a REDUCING FLOOD DEFENCE measures along the New Cut on Cumberland Road.

Another is to TARGET PEDESTRIANS and not bother with street lighting, except at bus stops, over the whole route. Another is to inexplicably “reduce the cost of city centre work” for the BRT scheme by £1.1m. Yet more corners cut then.

Another is to simply reallocate £1.5m to “OTHER SCHEMES”, which is likely to be transport budgets – so don’t expect any new pedestrian crossings any time soon in your community.

Yet another is to “reallocate” £0.4m from the CYCLING AMBITION FUND and spend it on the Bathurst Basin bridges. In other words money for cycling will be spent on buses!

A further £1.1m will be absorbed by “ADDITIONAL FUNDING”, whatever that is.

Is all this legal? Council budgets raided and tax payers money diverted – in secret – to corporations on the authority of unsigned confidential council cabinet reports?

The full report is here: BRT leak