9:03AM BST 27 Jun 2012
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South London Healthcare paid £3,000 a day over a year for the advice of Tim Bolot – whose recommendations included cutting overtime payments and the wages of front line staff.
The details followed the announcement that the South London Healthcare NHS Trust is losing £1 million a week
Despite his tips, the failing trust was still the first in England to be put under the control of Whitehall administrators.
The Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has ordered in the "hit squad" to take over at the trust as it emerged more than 30 others could be facing crippling debts.
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, the Daily Mail reported.
Between then and March last year, a total of £902,082 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.
The 42-year-old married father of two cut staff numbers and overtime payments, and reduced the agency staff bill.
But the moves led to some doctors complaining that they did not have enough equipment.
A spokesman for Bolt Partners said: "As a direct result of Bolt’s work, the Trust was able to deliver £52m of savings during the financial year 2010/2011 - the largest savings programme of any trust in London for that year (both in absolute terms and in percentage terms) and a significant achievement in a difficult operating environment.
"SLHT was able to achieve these savings with no compulsory redundancies in the 2010/2011 financial year."
Bolt Partners also advised the Surrey and Sussex NHS Trust between 2007 and 2008 – another of the trusts on the critical list.
Mr Bolot was also 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.
The spokesman said the team successfully transferred 40,000 employees and 32,000 residents and ensuring that no homes were closed in the process, thus avoiding the catastrophic ramifications of Southern Cross collapsing.
In addition to Bolt Partners, over the past year, South London Healthcare Trust has paid out at least £3.6 million on "external consultancy fees", including £70,000 to City giant McKinsey & Company, and £424,396 to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
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 front line services cut, workloads increased and pay frozen."
Meanwhile it emerged that more than 30 NHS trusts could be forced to merge, devolve services into the community and make job cuts as part of a radical restructuring of hospital care across England.
Yesterday the Department of Health said it considered 21 hospitals to be "clinically and financially unsustainable" and in need of radical restructuring.
However, the list did not include another five foundation hospitals – run independently of the Department of Health – which are also considered to be failing financially.
A further five foundation hospitals also have severe financial problems.
