Consultancy bill set to soar by over £500,000

The move means Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust will have as many as six consultants from Bolt Partners on its books with payments for the services of the private firm reaching as much as £250,000 next month alone.

Individual payments including VAT top £11,000 a week, with all of the consultants receiving expenses at a fixed rate of 7.5 per cent of their pay without having to provide a single receipt.

Details of a separate contract for an interim chairman at the troubled trust also reveal his appointment will cost the public purse £12,000 a month, plus VAT, 
while he works one or two days a week.

The deal to bring in Christopher Langley as interim chairman means he will receive up to three times the pay given to his predecessor, Peter Lee.

The trust agreed to increase the number of Bolt personnel from three to six at what it described as a “special meeting” of the board of directors which took place in August.

There is no reference to the meeting taking place on the public record of board meetings on the trust’s website and the trust has not provided details of the meeting to the Yorkshire Post.

The latest figures show that between January and August the trust has paid £643,000 including VAT for the services of Bolt Partners involving American interim chief executive Michael Morgan and two other members of its staff.

The team’s work was due to end with the appointment of a new chief executive and the completion of a strategic plan for the future of the trust.

But the trust failed to appoint a new boss last month and has postponed the completion of the plan until the end of December when it is due to be presented to the regulator Monitor.

Instead it now plans to appoint another interim chief executive at a cost of up to £2,500 a day.

Three new Bolt staff have been drafted in as part of the latest deal, paid at a rate of £1,750 a day. Total fees for the three are due to run to £397,000 between August and December, with expenses fixed at nearly £30,000. The trust will also fork out £85,000 in VAT bringing the bill to £512,000 over the period, and the likely final bill for the firm to around £1.5m.

The contract details for interim chairman Christopher Langley reveal his company, West Eaton Consulting Ltd, is being paid £12,000 a month for his services, plus VAT, while he works one or two days a week. He is also paid expenses including overnight accommodation on his visits to Rotherham from his home in London. He is due to be in post for at least six months.

In a preamble to their new contract document, Bolt officials say the short term future “now looks fine – however, there is still a need to find a sustainable long term future”.

They say the strategic plan will identify a preferred option that secures the trust’s longer term future, harnessing expertise of Bolt’s staff which includes experience in the United States, Australia and China, as well as the UK.