Albert Bore

Sir Albert Bore to leave £52k hospital job

City council leader to stand down as UHB chair in November

By:
Published May 5, 2013, in Politics


borepicSir Albert Bore is to stand down as chairman of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust.

The Birmingham City Council leader will quit the £52,000-a-year two-days-a-week job when his current contract comes to an end in November.

He will, however, continue to receive £65,000 a year in allowances as council leader.

Sir Albert has been under pressure from some Labour councillors to give up the UHB post earlier and concentrate full time on the task of running the city council.

He resisted all suggestions of standing down when he took over as council leader for the second time in May 2012, explaining that he possessed the ability, commitment and experience to oversee two important roles.

Sir Albert told Chamberlain News that he had always intended to quit the hospital in November because new NHS rules mean that UHB cannot reappoint the existing chairman unless “exceptional circumstances” apply.

This is thought to be a reference to the highly unlikely possibility that UHB is unable to find a suitable candidate to become the new chairman.

By November Sir Albert will have served seven years as the Trust’s chairman. He has overseen development of the £545 million Queen Elizabeth Hospital, the largest NHS project ever undertaken in Birmingham

Asked whether he would have more time to devote to council duties after leaving the hospital, Sir Albert said: “Yes, that and other things.”

He is expected to continue in his role as a member of the European Committee of the Regions, which involves regular trips to Brussels.

Sir Albert faces a challenge to his leadership at the annual Labour group meeting on May 11.

Quinton councillor John Clancy, who has been critical of Sir Albert’s insistence on holding two well-paid public offices, is making his second attempt to become council leader.

The UHB job is currently being advertised.

The role is described as providing exceptional leadership to the board of directors and governors.

Candidates are required to possess:

  • Excellent track record of achievement at board level within large customer driven organisations, whether in the public, voluntary or commercial sectors.
  • Non-executive or equivalent experience with the strategic skills and commercial acumen necessary to ensure excellent governance and board performance.
  • Well-developed communication and relationship management skills, political awareness and a strong commitment to the values of the NHS and public service.
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Clancy in pledge to slash £80m from council’s Capita paycheque

Service Birmingham deal an unaffordable 'Rolls-Royce' contract, claims Labour leadership contender

By:
Published May 1, 2013, in Politics


rollsBirmingham Council leadership contender John Clancy has likened the city’s multi-million pound ICT contract with Capita as an expensive “Rolls-Royce” luxury that can no longer be afforded.

Cllr Clancy said he would save up to £80 million by renegotiating the deal, or rip the contract up and offer the work to smaller local firms if Capita could not provide a cheaper service.

He is also promising to raise millions of pounds for public services by selling the council’s interest in the National Exhibition Centre, National Indoor Arena and Birmingham Airport.

Capita has been responsible for revamping the council’s ICT programme and call centre since 2005 and led a business transformation programme through joint venture company Service Birmingham.

The council has to pay Service Birmingham about £120 million a year, a sum that Cllr Clancy argues is out of all proportion with the value of the contract.

In his latest policy pronouncements, Cllr Clancy also pledged:

  • A significant planned programme of asset sales, including disposing of the council’s majority interest in the NEC and minority Birmingham Airport shareholdings to pension funds.
  • To establish a ‘Chamberlain Municipal Bank’ to provide and source community finance, basic services and utilities to Birmingham people where the market fails.

Cllr Clancy will stand against Sir Albert Bore for leadership of the council’s controlling Labour group on May 11. Should he win, he will become council leader.

His pledge to renegotiate the Service Birmingham contract may strike a chord with many Labour councillors who have been critical of the cost and value of the deal. Sir Albert is overseeing talks to cut about £20 million from Capita’s costs, but Cllr Clancy believes the figure is far too unambitious.

Cllr Clancy said: ““We cannot afford to be paying a tenth of our controllable budget in providing ICT and business services to ourselves and remaining schools. We have to decide what we can afford and pay no more.

“Service Birmingham should be forced to re-think and restructure the contract to meet our considerably reduced revenue and start again. Otherwise we should offer it to consortia of local SMEs instead who will undoubtedly be able to provide it within our revenue challenges, and enable us to absorb any exit cost.

“I do not think we can afford to pay any more than £40-50million a year through the Service Birmingham contract. We’ve been paying £120million. This is a Rolls-Royce contract formed in another era and it has to go in its present form.

“Again across the piece the private sector partners and contractors have to get real about our revenue situation. They have to cut their cloth to meet our inevitably new, reduced revenues and needs. We can’t afford to continue subsidising the big-business private sector with outdated, win-win contracts for them.”

He would use a structured sale of the council’s sprawling property portfolio to pay down an £850 million equal pay bill, thereby avoiding additional borrowing costs.

Cllr Clancy said: “We own too many commercial assets. We’ve forgotten why we own most of them. It’s a ridiculous thing for us to own literally billions of pounds of assets. In their present form, I say they have to go.

“We have to re-order our whole council away from such asset owning. We need, instead, to convert them into other assets or spending power in the economy that create housing and jobs.

“If we can use commercial asset sales to pay down £billions in debt, we should do exactly that: we should not be sentimental about which commercial assets we sell. And our current plans don’t go far enough.

“We should own buildings for families, homes and services, not commercial buildings. The NEC & NIA complexes and the Airport might better be owned by Pension Funds who would be happy to buy them.

“While the market is poor for sales, in the short term we should look at using asset-backed securities, placing assets into our very own wealth funds to release investment now in local housing, jobs and the local economy.”

Cllr Clancy said a municipal bank would provide affordable services for “ordinary Brummies” who were being excluded from basic services by the big banks.

He added: “I would look to ensure that our Municipal Bank is able to provide basic and enhanced banking services to Brummies to stop them being financially excluded, and to stop them having to pay more than the rest, especially when it comes to the basics like gas, electricity and water.

“I believe that we should look to provide in a range of other areas where market failure means some of the poorest, or all, Brummies get a bad deal. Municipal banking will lead the way and we will also look to provide insurance and savings.”

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Why it may be time to scrap Birmingham council cabinet

Labour leadership challenger John Clancy floats return to committee system

By:
Published April 29, 2013, in Politics


houseJohn Clancy will examine the possibility of scrapping the cabinet in favour of a return to the committee system of local government if he becomes Birmingham City Council leader.

The challenger for the Labour group leadership is promising to establish a commission to decide whether housing, finance and transportation committees, which last operated in 2001, would “be a better way of running the city” by involving many more people in decision making.

It’s believed the suggestion, which has been floated informally with colleagues by Cllr Clancy, has gained a broad measure of support from councillors who feel that the cabinet system inevitably results in decisions being taken by a very small number of politicians.

A clause in the Local Government Act allows councils

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Who should the Transport Secretary call to speak to the West Midlands?

Multiple fingers in bus, train and tram pie risk diluting region's message

By:
Published April 22, 2013, in Opinion


trainsA little over a week ago West Midlands councillors met and approved in principle plans to provide the region with a world class transportation network.

Wide-ranging proposals included some very old chestnuts indeed – huge expansion for the Midland Metro tram system, new freight rail links, improved passenger rail services, better buses with smartcard ticketing linking to rail, and enhancement of the motorway managed traffic system to name but a few.

The entire package, were it ever to be adopted in full, would cost well over £1 billion.

Similar schemes, invariably tagged ‘world class’, were talked about with great enthusiasm for many years by the West Midlands Passenger Transport Authority, Centro, although Government funding did not usually extend to fulfilling more than a tiny part of the wish list.

WMPTA’s successor, the Integrated Transport Authority, consisting of 27 councillors, met on April 15 to approve several weighty documents setting out a shopping list for Department of Transport cash. There has been remarkably little publicity given to this venture, possibly because the investment plans have more than an air of familiarity about them.

Two documents in particular deserve greater consideration:

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Lady Thatcher….. the last post

Political debate is good, let's have more of it

By:
Published April 17, 2013, in Opinion


stpaulsReaction to my Chamberlain News article, Why the Lady is for mourning, has been beyond anything I have experienced in 36 years of journalism.

Some correspondents disagreed with every word, others approved of every word, and some were in agreement with parts but not all of the narrative.

Clearly, the death of Baroness Thatcher has sparked a lively political debate the like of which this country has not witnessed for many years. And that is undeniably positive in an age when politicians and political ideas are viewed, at best, with suspicion, and more often with total disinterest.

Love her or loather her, almost everyone has a view about Margaret Thatcher, even if in many cases her loudest opponents are too young to know any more than myth and hearsay about the conduct of her governments and the challenging times in which she ran the country.

You will be getting a little overdosed on Thatcher articles by now, so I intend to keep this short.

My central point, that Margaret Thatcher must be seen as

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