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New hospital - trusts should arrange own finance
I REFER to the Horsham edition front page article on January 15 about a new hospital.
We have parish councils, district councils, town councils, city councils, county councils and the House of Commons. All elected bodies and staffed by well paid and pensioned civil servants. In addition, we have the National Health Service, similarly staffed.
We also have unelected quangos, also staffed by civil servants.
According to the Government website there are some 1,162 quangos employing some 600,000 people. The work they do should be done by the elected bodies. The 2008 cost of quangos was, I believe, 34bn.
Whilst abolishing these bodies would not save much money over the first two years, due to redundancy and unemployment benefits, after that time a growing cash surplus should be available to finance any number of new hospitals.
These should be built by the appropriate health trusts. Firstly they should get all their staff representatives together and write an outline specification, have an architect develop it into a plan and detailed specification. Then they should employ a commercial estate agent to seek quotations.
The trusts should arrange their own 25 year finance privately and should not pay more than half a per cent (50 points) above the base rate since the Government is paying. All this work will take about two years by which time funds should be available to sign finance documents and pay deposits. This assumes that the Government will wake up and close most of the quangos.
You do not need these public/ private finance deals which require an expensive profit element to cover the risks and the shareholders' dividends. The private sector always gets the better of the public one since the public one does not, generally, use professional bodies to negotiate for them.
P.K. ARBUTHNOT
Fieldgate Close, Monks Gate, Horsham
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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