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Chief Executive of Cash Starved NHS Trust reluctant to explain Trust contract awarded to her husbands firm.
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by desik | May 10, 2007 at 05:19 am
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Chief Executive of Cash Starved NHS Trust reluctant to explain Trust contract awarded to her husbands firm.
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Fiona Edwards the Chief Executive of the
Surrey and Borders NHS MH TrustSurrey UK, is currently stalling on investigating a formal complaint about how her Trust which recently moved to cut pitiful £3 a day payments to its disabled garden centre workers awarded a plum contract to her husband Mark Edwards IT firm, Softools.
Ms Edwards has insisted that the
Trust Board were aware of the contract and ensured that there was no conflict of interest however as soon as a complaint was made Softools re-edited its website to remove all mention of work the company had done for the Surrey & Borders NHS MH Trust.
Mark Edwards is a Director and co- founder of Softools, a company which appears very adept at networking Government contracts. The company refused to comment on why it had re-edited its website or why when it was advertising the work it had done for the Surrey & Borders NHS MH Trust the relationship between Director Mark Edwards and Trust Chief Executive Fiona Edwards was not made clear to potential clients.
Softools is currently seeking contracts with other NHS Trust's.
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at 02:12 on May 16th, 2007
Thanks Silvis.
The really depressing aspect here isnt that the Edwards saw nothing untoward in failing to make it clear what their actual relationship was in Softool's pitches to other NHS Trust's and Government departments but that the Surrey & Borders NHS Trust Board and other statutory bodies which are supposed to monitor the Trust's business dealings were not even trying to keep an eye on the situation. Its hardly rocket science is it? Public money going to a firm run by the husband of the Chief Executive and no-one bothering to ensure that this situation, questionable enough in its own right, was not abused.
Mr Edwards firm Softools was using the Surrey & Borders NHS Trust contract as a case example on the firms website in a pitch to other NHS Trusts - national health service hospital Trust's funded by public money - without that vital piece of information that the Trust was run by his wife.
Most people simply would not have put themselves in this morally hazzardous situation.
The Edwards put their own interests before the public good here and although Mark Edwards can just shrug his shoulders and say Softools is a private company Fiona Edwards has no excuse as she gets paid around £120,000 a year by taxpayers to put the interests of the Surrey & Borders Trust first. Fiona Edwards signally failed to do that and the public have a right to openly ask why.