General Election June 2017

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/uk-general-election-polls-jeremy-corbyn-in-shock-surge-in-london-as-labour-leader-now-more-popular-a3554371.html

Come on Tim!

Local elections, ok, westminster, nope.

UK citizens that are more than 15 years away lose UK voting rights...and aren't guaranteed voting where they are either.

A reduced conservative majority is a win in my book.

+1

Agreed. I started watching assuming that he knew what he was talking about. Turns out he's an IT specialist with a somewhat shaky grasp of economics.

The headline points are true though.

The Naylor Review:

Proposes the selling of NHS property to the private sector.
Advises the mantra that the NHS is not in the business of property ownership.
Proposes selling at lower than market value to speed up sales.
Proposes that the government subsidise the disposals for speed of sale.
Suggests that the cost of estate management for the NHS is too high and that trusts should be tenants of specialist property management companies instead.

What it doesn't do:

State that ALL property has to be sold.
Explain how the flaming clitori it will be cheaper for a trust to rent property after a service charge and profit margin has been applied by the management company.

The official line is that NHS Property Services was only formed as a Ltd company due to a technical accounting oversight and not for ulterior motives (privatisation). My firm was hired to consult on the setting up of the IT aspect of NHSPS and this was certainly what I heard from the director level meetings I attended.

In practice, I have been away from NHSPS for three years so a lot could have changed. The last thing I saw them doing was selling off the clearly surplus property such as Dulwich Hospital, the Temperance Hospital and various brown field sites to developers. Nobody was talking about active facilities at the time. Indeed, most of the talk was around economies of scale through the streamlining of local estates teams.

I thought I saw a stat saying 531k new young voters had registered on the last day of registration alone.

obviously that might not translate into actual votes or even non-tory votes but its hopeful

Proposes selling at lower than market value to speed up sales.

Proposes that the government subsidise the disposals for speed of sale.

Er, wot??? Unless they can show in black/white that's going to save cash it sounds well dodgy.

Flaming clitori, hah, not bad not heard that before :)

I've got the summary open in another tab, but haven't summoned up the will to get stuck in.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/607725/Naylor_review.pdf

On ideological grounds have have no issue with what is effectively the state selling its assets to raise money to then deliver those services. What confuses me is the rational for such a big a public subsidy to incentivize it.

Wiki says Naylor has been a chief exec in the NHS for 24yrs. Whereas the youtube link implied he was a porter or something. Probably need to rewatch the video and read the report in full though!

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/03/082703.asp

(full disclosure contains some other colours ;)

I thought I saw a stat saying 531k new young voters had registered on the last day of registration alone.

Yep.

https://www.gov.uk/performance/register-to-vote/registrations-by-age-group

For 22nd May 2017:-

Under 25: 246,487
25-34: 206,659
35-44: 88,956
45-54: 47,906
55-64: 21,204
65-74: 7,689
Over 75: 3,488

OK fair enough, BUT I would still want to see it black/white as something that pays off.

Interest rates are f-all atm but inflation is rising which cuts debts down too. So your site link has a couple of great pointers, but have they [gov that wants to sell] done the maths? :)

And is selling something to cut costs the same as an investment? Well perhaps if you can invest the money and ensure you have a great return, but if you use it to pay off bills on a low interest rate loan... etc etc.

It's after all tax payer's money. I'm not always anti privatization, but I'm just a little distrustful of it. We've had things privatized in the Netherlands too, and often it ended up costing money, not saving it. It really depends on HOW you do it and what checks/balances etc..

The shareholder is listed as:

Top Shareholders

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR HEALTH GBP 253,800,001 ORDINARY 1 100

Don't suppose you (or anyone else) know what the legal status of the Sec of State for Health is? I assume it has to be some sort of legal person, right? But what?

The obvious option seems to be to split buildings into two groups; 1) useful or necessary for health care, 2) not needed for health care. You keep all of 1) and start using it. 80-100% of anything suitable for residential in 2) is rented / sold to the LA for council housing. For everything else in 2) you create some sort of JV with a private company who makes their margin by way of a success fee on the profit delivered back to the Health Trust. The Trust gets to rent-seek, the private Co. makes money for delivering an economic benefit.... you could use a community interest company or something.

Might make d'nb fans smile:

21/03/2017 Mr D.J. Markey has left the board
#dadjoke

^Video was talking about Simon Stevens having done some "shop floor" type training.

Temperance Hospital is a classic example of an asset that should be have been put to use or disposed of; been unused as a hospital since 1990 then was offices for a while after that and been boarded up for a decade now I think whilst NHS rents floors of office accomodation in Stephenson House 200m further down Hampstead Road.

The NNUH here in Norwich is rented from one of these external companies and from what I've heard it's a complete nightmare. Extremely expensive, takes forever to get anything fixed or sorted and you can't so much as put up a notice board without permission from the company

The youtube video mentioned that the CEO of NHPS did a week of work experience as a porter. Think you might have the wrong end of the stick. Or I do. Perhaps we are holding both ends of the same stick.

Superb: http://newsthump.com/2017/06/01/husband-slammed-by-wife-for-failing-to-remember-cost-of-paint-for-planned-kitchen-extension/

Stephenson House was only occupied by the NHS due to the planned sale of St Pancras Hospital which as far as I know never happened.

You don't want to know how much the rent is there. In 2010 it was about £500k per floor per year.

I thought this was interesting;

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/31/the_madness_of_outliers/?mt=1496326310626

I seem to recall also a v. long term agreement was signed right before PCTs were abolished, and it was less than half full even before NELCSU staff moved out to Moorgate last year. NHS definitely should not be in the property business.

I've had a quick scan through the Naylor report and I can't see the backup for a lot of the things you are saying.

It proposes selling inefficient parts of the estate to the private sector. This seems like a reasonable suggestion.

I can't see a proposal to sell at lower than market value to speed up sales. Arguably the fact that there is a "2 for 1" offer will encourage higher prices because every extra pound you get from the sale is doubled. My take is that they don't want property being sat on as its value may go up and you may realise more in future, that's not lower than market value.

I don't see any definitive proposals that estate management costs are too high and trusts should be tenants instead. The report talks about the need to improve the NHS' skills in this area It is important that strategic estates skills are developed within the NHS and embedded throughout the system.

There is a reference that Similarly, it can be argued that the facilities management functions should be subject to competitive tendering with private sector providers which is what you could be referring to. Many large businesses opt to use a management company, it can be a viable option.

There are certainly areas to consider that may be of concern but a fair bit of the comments seem to be scaremongering or people, such as the guy in the video, who do not fully understand the report (it's not the easiest of reading).

I appreciate that you may have a different view looking at it from the inside but the report itself doesn't seem too bad.

@dubtap and @Stonehedge - ah yes, my mistake. Obvs depends on the extent of his powers, but he's not on the board. Seems like it would make more sense to find some other writing on the topic rather than that dude's video.

I can't see a proposal to sell at lower than market value to speed up sales.

Not directly, but quick sales tend to necessitate a lower price. A buyer being aware of the increased costs on a trust gives them negotiating room to discount that cost.

p23

7.2.2 Tweaking existing incentives
We also considered options for changing the incentives trust face at a smaller, incremental
level, for instance:
• increasing the capital charges from their current 3.5%;
• having greater charges on surplus land

A completely​ non representative, yet deliciously hubristic quote from that article:

if polls keep moving against the Conservatives, a hung parliament is possible – in which case, expect short-term turmoil, and May overtaking Sir Alec Douglas-Home as the shortest serving Prime Minister in modern times. He made it to 363 days. By June 9 she will have served just 331 days.

Ha-that's shorter than some people's probationary periods. Does she still get the pension and lifetime security detail?

531 is awesome