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The former NHS boss behind one of the Government’s most expensive – and mysterious – supplier contracts has been paid more than £500,000 since 2017.
In 2020, Express revealed that the Government did not know how they came to employ Kim Hodgson, who was once criticised in national papers for raking in a fee three times as high as the Prime Minister.
At the time, she had been paid around £315,000 for carrying out a number of HR-related tasks and act as assessor for senior positions for the island’s Health Department.
Among her duties was sitting on the interview panel in the recruitment of Health's Director General Caroline Landon in 2018, and in 2019 for Our Hospital Clinical Lead Professor Ashok Handa, for whom she was also Technical Assessor.
But despite her contract – via her firm ‘Improving Performance Consultancy’ – being one of Government’s most costly at the time, Express uncovered that there was no record of how she had come to be employed.
Pictured: In 2020, the Government said no details about Ms Hodgson's initial appointment could be found because those who recruited her no longer work there.
Chief Minister, Senator John Le Fondré, later blamed this on “poor record-keeping” by previous health bosses.
The Government then told Express that her services were due to cease at the end of March 2020. A response to a request made under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Law at the time stated that “many of the previous areas of assistance will not be required going forward”.
But it has now emerged that Ms Hodgson has continued working for Government, with Improving Performance Consultancy having been paid £506,192 to date, according to information released under FOI Law this month.
Other payments made to the consultancy totalled £13,766: flights (£10,803), hotel (£2,100) and ‘other’ (£863).
The response to the FOI request stated that Ms Hodgson “will not be engaged as of the end of March 2022”.
Ms Hodgson’s rate made national news headlines in 2014 when it was revealed she had been paid £95,000 for just two-and-a-half months’ work at the Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust.
Pictured: A report from the Daily Mail regarding Ms Hodgson's consultancy rates.
One Daily Mail headline drew comparison with the amount paid to the political head of the country: “Temporary boss parachuted in to help failing NHS trust was paid THREE times as much as the Prime Minister.”
Then when she took up a new role in Southport in 2016, local Liberal Democrats described her as the “NHS Payout Queen”, with one counsellor commenting: “No hospital chief executive should be paid more than the Prime Minister. We need to be assured that Southport hospital's massive debt is not being racked skyward by similar payments.
"What message would that send out to the hard-working medical and support staff being asked forever to make do on limited resources under massive pressures?"
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