howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
in liquidation now. 20,000 jobs on the line.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Appears that the taxpayer will be funding wages to stop things grinding to a halt. Unfortunately those in the supply chain who lose their jobs won't have any help.
https://news.sky.com/story/live-ailing-construction-giant-carillion-enters-into-liquidation-11208600Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
so snubbing the nhs yet again, oh well profit before health care yet again.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
TheThinWhiteDuke- Registered: 7 Jul 2016
- Posts: 346
So. How should I/we feel about this then?
The cynic in me is so angry. It's thinking: "Yet another huge cock up by this incompetent lot. I'll bet someone, somewhere, knew that the company were a bit financially flaky, but were possibly told "award us these contracts and there'll be a cushty job on the board for you afterwards when you inevitably retire/lose your seat"".
It's either bent or incompetent at the top. Probably a bit of both.
Are we going to be left with lots of half built, unfinished infrastructure?
Weird Granny Slater
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 7 Jun 2017
- Posts: 3,030
NOT the Daily Mail headline: OUTRAGE AS CAPITAL SHAFTS WORKERS, AGAIN.
'Pass the cow dung, my dropsy's killing me' - Heraclitus
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Government contracts given to them after they had issued a profits warning.
Captain Haddock
- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,005
And things would be so different under Labour this time around?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/931773.stm
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Health+Minister+defends+PFI+scheme.-a0159840838
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labours-computer-blunders-cost-16326bn-1871967.html
Of course they would - because in spite of the fact that the policies proposed by Corbyn/McDonnell have failed wherever and whenever they have been used in the past THIS time it's going to be different.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Weird Granny Slater- Location: Dover
- Registered: 7 Jun 2017
- Posts: 3,030
I'd better rephrase that non-headline:
OUTRAGE AS CAPITAL AND GOVERNMENT SHAFT WORKERS, AGAIN.
'Pass the cow dung, my dropsy's killing me' - Heraclitus
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Courtesy of the Times, yesterday we were told that no taxpayers money would be used.
Ministers are scrambling to get construction work restarted on a major hospital run by Carillion as MPs raise concerns over the future of private finance initiative schemes. Yesterday the government guaranteed payments for all Carillion employees working on public sector contracts and urged them to turn up for work.
However there are additional complications for Carillion contracts governed by PFIs, including the contract for Midland Metropolitan Hospital in Sandwell, where the bank rather than the official receiver must now make decisions about the project’s future. The National Audit Office is expected to publish a damning report into PFI schemes on Thursday. Taxpayers face a bill for hundreds of millions of pounds from the collapse of Carillion after ministers made an open-ended commitment to protect the company’s public sector work.
They guaranteed the salaries of employees in 450 public sector contracts yesterday and urged them to keep turning up for work after the company went into liquidation saying that it could no longer service its £1.6 billion debt. Thousands more Carillion employees in private sector contracts will find out tomorrow whether they still have jobs because ministers allowed 48 hours for other companies to take over the contracts.Carillion had 20,000 employees in the UK and 62 per cent of its work was in the private sector. Almost 30,000 people are likely to suffer cuts to their pensions after its collapse.
Construction work has been stopped at the £350 million Midland Metropolitan Hospital, which is two thirds complete and is already over budget and delayed. The hospital was due to open next spring, providing maternity, acute and emergency services. The Treasury, the local NHS trust and The Hospital Company, which holds the building contract, were in urgent talks last night over its future.
“The government’s wish and intention is that we can get on with construction work in the west midlands without material disruption,” the Cabinet Office minister, David Lidington, said.
However, Stella Creasy, the Labour MP, said that Carillion’s PFI contracts could prove especially difficult for ministers. “Critically, banks take priority in these contracts as the senior lenders,” she said. “It is little wonder the minister today could not guarantee Carillion’s PFI-owned schools and hospitals will not have to be sold off to cover the company’s debts.”
MPs are pressing the government to stop payments to Carillion for ongoing PFI projects.
Mr Lidington said: “The principle will be that one will need to find willing suppliers to take over the role of Carillion in a PFI, but on the basis of the information that I have been given today no PFI faces an immediate crisis as a result of the liquidation.”
The Times understands that a taxpayer loan likely to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds will be handed to Carillion’s official receiver to keep public sector operations afloat, with a precise figure announced next month. The government hopes to recoup some of this because it will be first in line to benefit from remaining company assets after the liquidation.
The amount returned to the taxpayer “depends where the bodies are buried”, a government source told The Times. Mr Lidington told the Commons that the taxpayer loan was not a bailout because Carillion’s shareholders and lenders would bear the “brunt of the losses” and the government was focusing on protecting public contracts. “Taxpayers should not and will not bail out a private sector company or allow rewards for failure,” he said.
Ministers are likely to renationalise some of the work handed to the private sector, he said, with the Ministry of Justice among departments in line to take contracts back in house.
Senior executives at Carillion now face investigation by the official receiver and could face “severe penalties”. Richard Howson, who was chief executive from 2012 to July last year, pocketed £1.5 million in salary, bonuses and pension payments in 2016. As part of his departure deal, Carillion agreed to keep paying him a £660,000 salary and £28,000 in benefits until October.
Whitehall sources denied suggestions the government was behind the decision to put the company into liquidation, leading to its break-up, rather than administration, where a rescue package could be put together. “The maths dictated what happened, not us,” an insider said. Industry experts warned that Carillion’s collapse could trigger a “domino effect” hurting similar suppliers and smaller companies in the contracting sector. Ministers pledged to take a broader look at government procurement, after the conclusion of an inquiry by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs committee announced yesterday.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Ross Miller
- Location: London Road, Dover
- Registered: 17 Sep 2008
- Posts: 3,701
Cap'n this is a failure of governance by the civil service rather than Government.
The procurement process and rules used to obtain tenders for and award contracts by government are so hide bound with rules that it beggars belief. There was a clear failure of this process when the contract for HS2 and later contracts were awarded, all post major profit warnings and progressive delays and re-scheduling of completion dates on existing government contracts. Whether our politicians should or shouldn't have picked this up is moot, however the relevant government procurement and contract compliance teams most certainly should have and alarm bells should have been ringing in Whitehall for the best part of 18 months.
If there are lessons here they are around how government, issues tenders, assesses tenders, carries out due diligence, awards contracts, contractual terms, performance monitoring and contract compliance. Though these are lessons that Whitehall has ignored from PFI, rail franchising, NHS privatisation etc. so dont hold your breath and expect any changes.
"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." - James Dean
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
While loving someone deeply gives you courage" - Laozi
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,005
[QUOTE="Ross Miller"]Cap'n this is a failure of governance by the civil service rather than Government.
Correct.
I was e-mailed information today relating to the wonderful work which a PR release has told us is going to happen at Ashford Station:-
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/ashford/news/work-begins-at-ashford-international-station-158572/
What has happened is that THEY HAVE BUILT TRAINS WHICH DON'T FIT THE STATION!
The current network kinematic envelope & structure gauge has been used used for over 50 years. This is what train manufacturers SHOULD design trains to.
The DfT/ORR(HMRI) has allowed trains that don’t fit the UK network infrastructure to run and dumped the cost on the infrastructure operator.
We now have £100m additional costs because DfT didn’t manage the contract properly. Resources wasted, progress on other projects deferred, major disruption to users.
It's a total balls up and instead of being exposed by the press as such is sold as a great celebration that we are rebuilding Ashford Station.
You really could not make it up!
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,005
.ANY OTHER BUSINESS | MARTIN VANDER WEYER
Carillion has not crashed because it held too many school-meal contracts, but because of delays and cost overruns in civil engineering projects such as the Aberdeen bypass and big new hospitals in Birmingham and Liverpool. Civil engineering businesses traditionally tend to be undercapitalised, relying on debt to manage the hair-raising cashflows of their project portfolios. Carillion was formed from many such businesses — starting in 1999 with the construction arms of Tarmac and Wimpey and adding Mowlem, McAlpine and others — but instead of gaining strength through amalgamation, it multiplied risk.
Carillion’s catastrophe is not a parable of the evils of outsourcing, which remains the best value-for-money mechanism for many kinds of service delivery in both public and private sectors. Rather it’s a cautionary tale of lax financial control in over-expanded conglomerates. The best outcome now for some of its constituent firms would be to re-emerge from the rubble as independent operators — offering government a wider, safer range of contractors from which to choose.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Button
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 22 Jul 2016
- Posts: 3,040
Trains that don't fit are not unique to the UK:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27497727
Actually, I think I'm right in saying that it is not known what (loading?) gauge our network actually is, since 'gauge' includes clearance at axle level and this means surveying all bridgeworks - a daunting task. It is also possible to argue that the loading gauge has shrunk over the years as ballast beds have increased in height - leading to ex-GWR King class locomotives having to be modified to allow mainline running.
(Not my real name.)
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Going slightly off topic there used to be a company called Transfesa back in the 1970s that ran trains with interchangeable axles to fit in with the Spanish gauge. Originally it was just from France across the Pyreneese mountain range but it spread from all over Western Europe from operators who needed to get their wagons into Spain.
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,005
Button wrote:Trains that don't fit are not unique to the UK:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27497727
Actually, I think I'm right in saying that it is not known what (loading?) gauge our network actually is, since 'gauge' includes clearance at axle level and this means surveying all bridgeworks - a daunting task. It is also possible to argue that the loading gauge has shrunk over the years as ballast beds have increased in height - leading to ex-GWR King class locomotives having to be modified to allow mainline running.
Collett designed the "King" class to the maximum dimensions of the original GWR 7 ft 1⁄4 in (2,140 mm) broad-gauge engineering used to develop its mainline,[1] resulting in the largest loading gauge of all the pre-nationalisation railways in the UK, with a maximum height allowance of 13 feet 5 inches (4.09 m).[1] Consequently, this restricted them as to where they could operate under both GWR and British Railways ownership.
Not my specialist subject but I believe the above explains problem with King Class which has been there since Nationalisation and has nothing to do with ballast beds?
As I wrote above this time they have managed to build trains which do not fit the stations they were designed for. Epic fail.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,005
In passing - another knock on from Nationalisation was that Southern Rail structure gauge was not designed allow retro- fit of overhead electrification hence third rail in south east.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
John Buckley
- Registered: 6 Oct 2013
- Posts: 615
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