We did waste £800k on childcare, admits HSSD
Thursday 28th January 2010, 2:30PM GMT.
HEALTH and Social Services has squandered almost £1m. of taxpayers’ money subsidising childcare for just a handful of its staff.
Around £100,000 a year has been spent since 2001 for no actual benefit, the States was told.
Minister Hunter Adam (pictured) made the admission during question time after being challenged by former board member Mike Hadley.
Deputy Hadley said it was ‘an extraordinary waste of money’ and wanted to know what department would negotiate such a contract. He said after the exchange in the Assembly that he had concerns over HSSD spending.
‘I think it shows a lamentable degree of financial scrutiny and one wonders, if such a large sum of money can be wasted on only 23 people, what is being wasted on the rest,’ he said.
The matter arose when Deputy Hadley asked Deputy Adam what the saving would be to the department for withdrawing nursery subsidies [part of the £6m. budget cuts] that were given to staff and how much individuals had benefited from it.
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Now there’s a surprise.
Previous president b*llshi**ed tax payers that no savings could be made. Impossible eh Pedro? Medical costs going up la-di-la-di-dah? Any idiot can spend money but now we have to cut our cloth its amazing what we can find.
Thank god roffey’s relegated to the pages of the GP where Mr Teflon can whitter on without costing us any more money.
Roffey’s record of Fallagate, 6million on record system that doesn’t work along with support of zero/10 is up there with Lindon, his tankers and his promises of 6% growth, firefighting debacle and everything else these two touch.
At least you can see Lyndon coming a mile off. IN my view Roffey plays a far better game. One down, one to go!!
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800K of public money spent on childcare for a handful of staff – it just shows what a lot of ‘wasters’ of our money we have working in the States!
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Crazy…just crazy, i cringe at where my taxes end up. Why not cut to the chase, lets forego the impending deliberation and downward spiral of the states common sense over the next year or two and buy the chocolate teapots now, thats what everyone who is not a states member (and most likely a hefty portion of them too come to think of it) assumes our glorious committee will take us nezt. Surely this year the ‘buying mudflaps for tortoises’ department will overspend too no doubt ;-)
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Absolutely, Jackie.
And lets not forget the new computer system for the police, who (allegedly, but I have it on v good authority) only discovered it ‘didn’t work’ and had to abandon it after the tax payers had paid well over a mill for it….
that got quietly swept under the carpet…..
obviously not enough over paid, imported consultants brought in on that one.
Since the monkeys who used to make the tea ads became victims of political correctness and are now available, perhaps we could get them to replace the politically incorrect monkeys we’ve got running our island?
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I think it is high time the media, as well as other states members, investigated whether there is any personal or family connections involved in all these massive favourable wastages.
Somebody somewhere is doing very nicely. No doubt they are also extremely thankful. Is there any conflicts of interest anywhere?
Far too much money is thrown away simply because some states members are unbelievably inept or it can only be a case of back scratching.
It’s time for all states members to have their personal wealth carefully examined. There are many stories floating around that would horrify the bankers insider trading legislation.
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SCARLETT i also no for a fact that the states ins paid over 10 mill for a new computer system that they do not use.
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How difficult can it be to manage a handful of small islands with 60,000 people?
Money seems to be going down the drain left right and centre.
TH UK has wasted billions on a pointless and useless NHS computer system. Do we need to do the same thing?
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One things for certain you can bet that HSSD are not the only States department squandering money like this
Who picks up the bill for all this us the Tax Payers
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As the article today explains, the provision of playgroup places was started at a time when there was extreme difficulty getting nursing and other staff from the UK. There was a big clamour, including in the GEP, for something to be done. The then Civil Service Board could not be persuaded to increase salaries so other methods had to be found of which this was one – and it was successful. The fault lies not with HSSD but, once again, the system of setting pay in the public sector which takes little account of department’s needs.
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This is an ideal forum for States staff genuinely in the know to blow the whistle on States waste and do us taxpayers a very big favour.
Guernsey Press could then ask the initial questions to the relevant bodies and if they receive the usual brush off perhaps one of our more useful Deputies can repeat the questions at the next States meeting.
We already have two good ones for starters,the Police computer and the States Insurance computer. Now is the ideal time to reveal any others worth investigating.
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£800,000?
We could have bought a mri scanner for that. Or ran a proper school dental service for almost three years.
another classic case of states members not being able to prioritise.
the donk
your talking tosh. nursing reps have stated they could have had a creche at the hospital for a fraction of this costThey justweren’t consulted.
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again wasted money ,i think its about time all states members are vetted ie there bank account and that includes swiss ones as well someone is getting richer why guernsey is getting poorer
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the rat and paul, I think that you are both crediting them with
far to much ability. There is nothing suspicious, and I very much doubt that you would find that any friends or family have benefitted from this or any other States spending. It is just the good old total States incompetence that we know and love!
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This demonstrates, yet again, the lamentable lack of control exercised by senior civil servants, managers and, above all, the political masters who should be overseeing these huge spending departments.
There is waste, overmanning, Spanish practices and, yes, downright theft in many States departments. Publicity has been given to the Co-op’s “unknown leakage” of around 1% of turnover. We don’t know the comparable figure for a single States department because there is no attempt made to measure it. I would bet good money the States “leakage” figures are several times as big as in commercial undertakings.
Leadership and control has to come from the top but it seems none of our current heads of departments have the courage to do more than chip around the edges of their spending.
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Ray and Ted you are both absolutely right.
A “Crimestoppers”-type whistle-blowing facility with the PAC would be the correct way forward but the Press would have more impact, rightly or wrongly, by keeping the matter in the public eye.
What I really worried about is my belief that in most cases of such ineptitude the elected politicians are invariably not to blame. Its usually the fault of some faceless, completely unaccountable senior servant who is able to keep making blunder after blunder at the expense of taxpayers, yet the relevant Minister will quite often take the blame on a “buck stops with me” basis, despite probably not knowing anything about it.
We have to identify and weed out these lethal civil servants (I am reliably informed that there are about 8 or 9 of them who we really ought to be worried about) and eliminate them from positions of such power so that they can’t keep adding to their list of expensive blunders. Otherwise folks its going to just keep on happening.
I’m afraid that the lunatics have taken over the asylum and that the elected politicians effectively don’t even possess a key to let themselves in. Its a very sorry tale of unaccountability, no reporting lines, no annual appraisals and so on. The positions that these civil servants have levered themselves into is beyond belief and somebody has to break up their cosy little set-up. If we have to pay them off then it will still be far cheaper compared to the cost of more major blunders.
Time for action, not words.
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I thought Peter Roffey might see fit to comment on this issue, surely he must know something about it?
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Phil
Peter Roffey should know something about it. He was El Presidente when this scheme was dreamed up in 2001
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Dave – well said. Political accountability is not what it might be but, at least there is public and press criticism of politicians. The civil servants, entrenched in their incompetence, answer to no-one. Attempts to remove the worst offenders often fail due to the antiquated civil service HR policies and inept implementation thereof. The civil service are so complacent from the times of plenty that they don’t even know where to begin when asked to reduce costs. Rewrite the HR rule book (with union consultation), actually appraise people (based on corporate objectives) and reward them based on their performance not tenure, then there is a chance that change can be brought to bear on the States.
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Ray – precisely. Odd that he seems to have missed this particular thread isn’t it?
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the bureacrat
Spot on. The key phrase is ‘complacent from the times of plenty’.
My brother ,before he retired, was in charge of a department budget,and was always urged from above to spend up every last penny before the year end so that next year’s budget would not be cut.
He used to spend several days towards the end of each year looking up and ordering useless stuff to avoid condemnation from his superiors.
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@coco “SCARLETT i also no for a fact that the states ins paid over 10 mill for a new computer system that they do not use.”
How do you know “for a fact” they do not use it?? Do you work there?
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