Our esteemed Tory led government came to power determined to sweep away all those quangos that Labour had. They promised a "Bonfire of the Quangos"
Let's just take one area, the NHS and see how they are doing. Under the old system, there are essentially three tiers of management. More than 150 Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) make decisions locally on commissioning and are monitored by 10 strategic health authorities (SHAs). Ultimately, they are answerable to the health secretary.
Under the Tories' new system there is a rise in quangos from 161 to 521!!!! The new bureaucracy consists of pathfinder consortia, health and wellbeing boards, shadow commissioning groups, authorised commissioning groups, a national commissioning board, PCT clusters, FHA clusters, clinical networks and clinical senates
Originally the idea was that the Health Secretary, Lansley would no longer be responsible for the NHS, that would be devolved locally. The plan was obviously to blame the local organisations when the whole thing went tits up just as they currently do with the effects of council spending i.e. its all the councils fault because they cant cope with central gov's 28% cut in funding. Lansley has been forced to re-take responsibility.
The cost of redundancies from the Primary Care Trusts which are being disbanded is currently ?850 million. It is expected that many of these people with huge commissioning healthcare experience will be re-employed in the new structures.
Message to Dave Wells. I am sure it is nowhere near as exciting as shooting porn, but hey commissioning healthcare seems to be a good business to get into!
Cheers
D