Finding out people are liars is never a pleasant experience: finding your council is populated by liars is just as miserable an experience.
For years the elderly residents of Thamesbrook enjoyed the tranquility and security of this fine home.
Suddenly, some months ago, residents were told that legionella had been found in one water tank and they would be moved out for three months during treatment.
But one perplexed expert told the Dame, "it takes about four hours to treat legionella in a water supply in a building like Thamesbrook; there is no need to move anyone out".
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| A VICTIM OF LIES |
Suddenly, some months ago, residents were told that legionella had been found in one water tank and they would be moved out for three months during treatment.
The three months are up and rather than residents moving back staff are now being issued with redundancy notices.
There was never any intention of moving residents back to their much loved home and doubtless soon the building will be offered to some spivvy offshore property developer.
So who is Stella Baillie?
Since her appointment Baillie has decimated services for older people by closing services that allowed people dignity and independence.
These are people with dementia, and often with continence problems, forced to endure daily bus rides in excess of two hours because services have been cut.
That is wrong especially in a borough noted for its profligate waste.
RBKC used to offer excellent services...but, no longer.
The excuse? We have no money.
Yet this is one of the world's richest borough's with reserves of over £100 millions, created through over taxation. It spends millions on Opera Holland Park and re-paving Exhibition Rd in Chinese marble, yet cannot be bothered to look after the frail and elderly.
The Dame is now going to be very cruel.
Some councillors do the job because they care; others for money( are you there Pooter?) and some because they like to splash taxpayer's money around on glamour projects to show off and feel self important
What breed of councillor do you have?
The Labour group is silent on this matter as on so many others.
ReplyDeleteThe Labour Group predicted that Thamesbrooke would be closed on some pretext many years ago when they demolished Edenham, and we have been watching it like a hawk, asking questions that have remained unanswered or received 'unrepresentative' answers (in some circles these are called lies).
DeleteAnyone who has bothered to attend Health and Adult Social Care committee meetings would know that we have been onto this latest turn of events challenging every questionable assertion; the Minutes are on the rbkc website.
But of course it is easier and much more fun simply to attack your adversaries without bothering to check the facts, Resident 23.08, so enjoy your day.
Dame, sorry to correct you but the 'usable Reserves' are £267m to date, an outrageous sum. The Council is happy to commit £2.6m of this to tart up Leighton House Museum, but when it comes to the £300k it needs to clean up Thamesbrooke so its residents can return, they wail 'there is no money in the pot'.
It's all about priorities, and we know where those of the ruling Group lie: art over vulnerable older people.
This blog has become an outlet for Cllr Dent-Coade. A Labour troll.
DeleteThe Hornet is a Labour blog, 15.22
DeleteDear 15.22, I think you've missed the meaning of 'troll'.
DeleteIf you use your own name to put up a correction to a comment that is mistaken, that's a correction.
Trolling is what YOU do. Got it?
The really great mystery is who actually runs this council, who makes these decisions and when? Is it the officers or the councillors? Or is it the finance department who are so far removed from caring or any type of human feeling they must be emotionally dysfunctional. There is no need for this, the council cannot have it both ways, three years ago they were managing everything wonderfully with stars coming out of their backsides. And now with millions in reserves they destroy the most vulnerable the elderly and disabled. They have already demonstrated their contempt for disabled children, is it all part of their social cleansing?
ReplyDeleteSome things in life are not to be dishonoured, caring about each other is one of those things.
Another property developer is about to clean up. Every day more circumstantial evidence emerges that certain Councillors and certain Officers are in the pay of developers.
DeleteThe Dame's Investigator needs to start looking at the lifestyle and investments of a handful of Councillors and Officers with fingers in the K&C planning system. It was shock/horror not so many years ago when one prominent Councillor (deep into planning approvals and pleading poverty) was found to have a recently acquired country house and three properties in the Royal Borough squirreled away in offshore trusts.
DeleteOut of sight and out of mind is the protection of the crooked
It seems that it is the finance department wielding the axe against our most vulnerable. So it is time that Lightfoot got some flack.
ReplyDeleteLightfoot is a sad little fellow with an orange coloured wig and a remaindered and dreary book to his name.
DeleteHe has no family or friends and lives with a family of cats: hence his total disinterest in real human suffering....weird little fella'.....
and where is Nicholas Holgate in all this?
DeleteThe £1m a year subsidy for Holland Park Opera (including free tickets for Councillors) is entering its tenth year. So stuff the poor - especially in North Kensington which is crying out for a clean out of the disadvantaged and upgrade to the advantaged
ReplyDeleteWhat a story! Blatant dishonesty. Elected Councillors should not be allowed to get away with this kind of thing. Is there not an ounce of compassion and/or straight dealing in Hornton Street?
ReplyDeleteCllr Paget-Brown, Leader of Kensington and Chelsea. Where are you, man?
ReplyDeleteCorrection: usable Reserves are now £283m.
ReplyDeleteThis obscenity must stop.
The council seems to have found the £27 million necessary to renovate its own RBKC Lubyanka on Hornton Street, but is now unable to find £350,000 for its elderly residents in Chelsea. Which incompetent sets their priorities.
ReplyDeleteI suggest that anyone interested in the council's motives for closing Thamesbrook read the council's own report at:
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/m9sqrrf
In points 5.13 5.14 the report states
5.13. The full unit costs for placements in the home in 2014/15 are £1,302 per week for residential dementia beds and £1,405 per week for nursing beds (net of
registered nursing care contribution). These unit costs are considerably higher
than the average unit cost for equivalent residential dementia and nursing
placements funded by the Council in the independent sector, which are currently
£668 and £740 respectively.
5.14. The temporary transfer of residents to alternative placements has achieved a
significant reduction in bed placement costs whilst still maintaining quality service
provision. For example, some residents are now fully funded by the NHS and
some are placed at a unit cost of between £500 and £600 per week.
This was never about Legionella, but about the deliberate running down of a once great facility to save the council money at the expense of our most vulnerable citizens.
If RBKC, despite it's reserves in excess of £283 million, needs to save money so desperately why are we still able to fund the councils friends at Holland Park Opera with £1 million per annum. Friends before the vulnerable?
My mother in law spent her last years very happily at Thamesbrook, the care provided was excellent and the staff were the best and most dedicated people you could wish to meet. That this service has been closed and denied to older people of the future for ever on a whim by greedy councillors and some here today and gone tomorrow manager is nothing short of a scandal.
ReplyDeleteThe story of the legionella ought to be investigated as the story told by the council sounds like a bare faced lie and experts are saying so, you don't need to look to far to find that comment.
This service should be reopened without delay, the redundancy notices rescinded and people offered a choice of moving to this building which still exceeds by a significant margin the services provided by other places around here.
Hopefully the press will pick this up and the rotten councillors and the shocking Stella Baillie will be held very publicly to account. I will be doing my best to generate press interest and I would ask everyone else to do the same thing.
At last the delightful Stella Baillie, alleged reincarnation of the Hungarian Duchess Erszebet Batory who bathed in the blood of virgins is finally named. I witnessed the glacial Ms Baillie in action at a public meeting where she bullied and disparaged an older lady who was trying to get through to Ms Baillie the impact of her dire housing situation on her health. Ms Baillie declared from on high "Housing has nothing to do with Social Care and in any case if you don't like it, blame the elected members". Now since when have RBKC senior officials ever allowed Members any say? That is dangerous talk and who knows where that might end - democracy or something equally messy. That would never do. She seems to specialise in imperious behaviour particularly around those whom she purports to be "helping" ie. the most vulnerable and those with little chance if any of ever being heard.
ReplyDeleteMy mother in law spent her last years very happily at Thamesbrook, the care provided was excellent and the staff were the best and most dedicated people you could wish to meet. That this service has been closed and denied to older people of the future for ever on a whim by greedy councillors and some here today and gone tomorrow manager is nothing short of a scandal.
ReplyDeleteThe story of the legionella ought to be investigated as the story told by the council sounds like a bare faced lie and experts are saying so, you don't need to look to far to find that comment.
This service should be reopened without delay, the redundancy notices rescinded and people offered a choice of moving to this building which still exceeds by a significant margin the services provided by other places around here.
Hopefully the press will pick this up and the rotten councillors and the shocking Stella Baillie will be held very publicly to account. I will be doing my best to generate press interest and I would ask everyone else to do the same thing.
Who is Stella Baillie? What does the Dame know about her? Where did she come from?
ReplyDeleteMs Baillie is an out of control Officer. Cllr Paget-Brown is proving to be a weak Leader - Officers routinely take Paget- Brown for granted. Chief Clerk Holgate is finding it difficult to get to grips with his new job.
DeletePeter Rachman was the notorious slum landlord who operated in North Kensington. It is sad to see that his tactics are being used again by a democratically elected Council
ReplyDeleteIt's a pity that Thamesbrook has been closed, it used to offer excellent care and was a very well managed home with an excellent staff team.
ReplyDeleteNot long after she was appointed to RBKC I had the misfortune to meet Stella Baillie. In conversation I said something about the portfolio of services for older people she had inherited and how good they were. She looked at me in horror and said she would be closing them all as soon as possible. I was shocked and asked why you would want to close something that was good, had an excellent reputation and performed well and her response was that councils didn't provide services, they were too much trouble for someone like her and she would be getting rid of them.
Over some years I watched her do just that, picking them off one at a time, day centres, homes, supported housing, home care and then there was only Thamesbrook which was the jewel in the crown left.
She let that fall in to a state of decay, failed to appoint an appropriate manager when a long standing one left and standards fell. She then brought back the manager who had closed Edenham for her with a remit to close Thamesbrook, that failed and the manager left RBKC saying there were no grounds to close an excellent home.
Finally the legionella lie as it should be known was invented. Legionella in drinking water?? Did they not do their research properly? It only occurs in stored water and any drinking supply is mains fed. Even it it is in stored water it is only a hazard in vapour in for example a shower as any hotel manager will tell you. If the shower is used regularly and the system cleaned it is not a hazard at all.
If there was legionella in the drinking water in Dovehouse Street it was a worldwide first and surely Dovehouse Street residents and the Royal Brompton would have been affected too? Surely this new threat to well being could not have been only confined to Thamesbrook which conveniently Stella Baillie had a long term ambition to close? In any event, as before legionella does not occur in mains water supplies which are too cold for it to survive in so the 'legionella lie' is exactly what it was.
At least one head should roll but surely too should those of the councillors stupid enough to be taken in by this, have they forgotten their responsibility to question and scrutinise? Or did they not have the intelligence to do that?
It's very sad that a public body can lie so blatently and no doubt they will continue to get away with it. I'm more glad every day that I'm not there any more.
I am sure Stella is only doing the bidding of her political masters from the top down. The days of "noblesse oblige" are long gone and no matter if they love opera or not they are still the Nasty Party. One has only to remember the performance of Julie Mills at the Cabinet Meeting discussing the closure of EPICS (joke - no discussion took place and Moylan played with his Blackberry all the way through) to know that the attack on our previously excellent services has the full suport of the "great and the good"
ReplyDeleteOh come on, I think you're attributing a level of intelligence to the politicians in RBKC that evidence would suggest does not exist and to a point you provide the proof in siting cabinet meetings and their activity there. Most of them don't even read the papers let alone take part in the debate. The likes of Baillie just have their way regardless.
DeleteBTW Legionella can live in "dead legs" in pipework so it might not be an out and out lie
ReplyDeleteBut in a home that was busy where presumably residents were washing every day and people were drinking tap water - we know that latterly bottled water was supposed to be brought in, where on earth would legionella occur? Surely there was a maintenance and inspection programme and had it been found it could have been treated in a matter of hours simply by running the taps.
ReplyDeleteIt's only hazardous when inhaled through vapour, cold water carries no risks whatever.
Eventually every council owned facility in the Rotten Borough will be closed down and flogged off to developers to be turned into empty luxury flats. Meanwhile certain individuals in Hornton Street will have pocketed yet more wads of illicit cash. Residents will have to shut up and lump it.
ReplyDeleteThis situation will only change when residents vote for AN Other.
Name names! Of course you can't.
Delete