By Sam Greenhill, Eleanor Harding and Tim Shipman

PUBLISHED: 17:30 EST, 26 June 2012 | UPDATED: 18:09 EST, 26 June 2012


Slashed spending: Tim Bolot charged 3,000 a day to provide money saving tips

Slashed spending: Tim Bolot charged 3,000 a day to provide money saving tips

The NHS hospital trust on the brink of going bust lavished more than 1million on a 'fat  cat' consultant offering money-saving tips.

South London Healthcare shelled  out the equivalent of almost 3,000 a day over a year for the advice of  Tim Bolot – who suggested slashing overtime payments and the wages of frontline staff.

Despite his tips, the failing trust has become the first to be put into special measures, triggering fears departments and wards will close.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has ordered a 'hit squad' to take over at the crisis-stricken trust, which is losing  1million each week.

It has crippling debts totalling 150million, run up under Labour's controversial Private Finance Initiative (PFI), which is similar to a mortgage deal.

The South London trust hired Mr Bolot, an accountant and a qualified  barrister, as interim finance director in April 2010 to help manage its money.

Between then and March last year, a total of 1,106,713 was paid to his firm, Bolt Partners, which describes itself  as a 'leading turnaround and performance consulting boutique'.

Two colleagues were also appointed to help him work on the project.

42-year-old father-of-two Mr Bolot's 2 million home in north London

42-year-old father-of-two Mr Bolot's 2 million home in north London

The 42-year-old married father of two – who owns a 2million house in London – slashed staff numbers and overtime payments, and reduced the agency staff bill. But some doctors complained that they were running out of equipment.

Bolt Partners also advised the Surrey and Sussex NHS Trust between 2007 and 2008 – another of the trusts on  the critical list.

And Mr Bolot was involved in the aftermath of the Southern Cross care home scandal, which saw thousands of elderly people threatened with eviction when the firm got into financial trouble

In addition to Bolt Partners, over the past year, South London Healthcare Trust has paid out at least 3.6million on 'external consultancy fees', including 70,000 to City giant McKinsey & Company, and 424,396 to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

None of the consultants was able to  prevent the trust failing.
The figures were kept secret until bosses released them under the Government's transparency agenda, which dictated all payments of more than 25,000 be published.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has ordered a 'hit squad' to take over at the crisis-stricken trust

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has ordered a 'hit squad' to take over at the crisis-stricken trust

Critics last night branded the consultancy fees a waste of money.
Dr Peter Carter, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said: 'The trust needs to justify why it paid an interim finance director this much when nurses and other NHS staff are seeing frontline services cut, workloads increased and pay frozen.

'Wasteful spending throughout the NHS should be eradicated and resources directed to the front line where they help patient care.' Dr Sarah Wollaston, Conservative MP for Totnes and a former GP, added: 'It's the kind of figure that is unhelpful in this financial climate.

'When you compare it with the salaries of other people, who are working hard and being asked to take pay freezes, it makes it that much harder to accept. It doesn't look like very good value for the taxpayer, and isn't a good message to send to the staff at the trust.'

Emma Boon, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, added: 'Taxpayers cannot afford to keep throwing billions of pounds into the bottomless pit that is the NHS.
'We need to make savings in the healthcare budget and it is those working at the coal face, not consultants, who are well-placed to identify wasteful spending.'

The chaos has already hit the trust's three hospitals – Queen Mary's in Sidcup, Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich and the Princess Royal University Hospital in Bromley, which together serve more than a million patients a year.

The chaos has hit the trust's three hospitals, including the The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich (pictured)

The chaos has hit the trust's three hospitals, including the The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich (pictured)

Although services have improved in recent months, patients still face some of the longest waits for operations in the country. One in six waited longer than the 18-week target – the worst figure for any NHS trust in London.

Health minister Simon Burns said: 'Yet again this Government is having to clear up the mess left to us by Labour but, unlike them, we will not sweep the problems in South London under the carpet.

'The trust has tried everything including hiring expensive consultants to sort out the situation but it has just got worse because it is struggling to cope with the huge PFI's that Labour left it with.'

Mr Bolot's spokesman defended his work, saying that without  him, the trust would have been 52million worse off.

His wife, Sasha, 40, also declined to comment yesterday.

A trust spokesman said that overtime payments to surgeons had been reduced by 1.5million, adding: 'As a result of these and other measures, a greater proportion of spending is now focused on frontline patient services.'

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The comments below have been moderated in advance.

It won't just be this hospital wasting huge amounts of money like this. If a finance dept needs to get in external people to advise them how to save money then clearly they aren't the right people for the job. We hear all the time that the finance directors of these hospitals are often paid well over £100,000 with bonuses and huge pay off packages but if they can't do the job (and need to get extnal advice) then they should be the first to go, not nurses and doctors and overtime. The problem was made by Labour when they introduced expended PF deals that are there just to make the private companies a lot of money. I don't know what Lansley can do about a deal that ties the NhS in for about 30 years. Labour should be ashamed of this policy.

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The trust, I presume employs a finance director and finance staff who are paid to deal with the finances of this hospital. Why then have they needed to pay a professional company, as well as huge amounts on external consultancy fees to deal with the finances. Clearly the staff the hospital employs in finance (probably at huge amounts of money and bonuses) can't do the job. They should be sacked. It seems obvious that anyone coming in to cut the budget are going to first cut nurses, doctors and overtime because they are an easy target but they are the people needed the most to keep this hospital going. The first thing to cut would be the entire finance department, them managers. I bet a normal member of the public could reduce costs without getting rid of the people who do the work, nurses and doctors.

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Anyone could have come up with the idiotic suggestions he made. These type of consultants (witch doctors) should be banned.

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"It has crippling debts totalling £150million, run up under Labours controversial Private Finance Initiative (PFI), which is similar to a mortgage deal." No, no, no. PFI is much worse. Imagine if under your mortgage you had to pay your lender every time you wanted to move the furniture, paint a wall or install some new electrics. Now imagine if you had to have cleaning services and general maintenance etc provided by them. Then what if you found out that you can't shop around for a good deal but are contractually obliged to purchase from the same mortgage company at vastly inflated prices. Doesn't sound good? Nope, but that's the reality of PFI. Oh yea, and you're locked in for 25-30 years with no option of changing providers. Now mortgage services make sense for those of us who don't have the capital to buy a property outright. However, when you have the resources of the government with the lowest possible borrowing rates it simply doesn't make any sense.

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This all goes to prove the old saying: 'You can't make a silk purse out of a pigs ear'.

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serioulsy they paid him 3000 a day what were they thinking lol

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The country is a joke. £3000 a day how do they get away with it? Friends running the show.

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It would have been a much better use of the £3.6 million to run a suggestion scheme that allowed front line workers to point out waste, without the fear of reprisals, which sadly is all too common in the NHS for 'whistle blowers'. Rewards as a percentage of savings would have given a much more targeted approach. I could set myself up as a consultant and recommend sacking staff and freezing pay, but this is not the problem with the NHS as any front line member of staff will tell you.

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Far better offer 1% of savings for a year for any savings suggested by anyone!

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Time to go back to the state where individual hospitals were managed by personnel within that hospital, and each hospital ran to a budget. But this will never happen, because it would mean disposing of too many stuffed shirts in the higher echelons of a self-serving politically motivated system. Rather than a truly patient-focused system that provides diagnosis and treatment to the public.

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