Closure of Ramsgate Age Concern

Ramsgate Town Council has received a report from Cllr Jill Kirby, Thanet District Council’s representative on Ramsgate Age Concern, and is both shocked and very displeased that it is only at this very late time it learns of the imminent closure of the Ramsgate Age Concern.

The Town Council has vote overwhelmingly with only two Conservative Councillor dissensions to write in protest at what has transpired.

It would appear that the handiwork of a small self interested group of officers, consultants and Age Concern managers has led to the destruction of a perfectly sound service to a very vulnerable group in the Ramsgate community. This small unaccountable group has acted as liquidators to a long serving and much valued trust.

The failure to consider the well being of our senior citizens is all the more discreditable in that it involves two levels of local government and the charitable sector, two sectors that purport to put service above profit.

Thanet District Council acted unreasonably and inconsistently in terms of the rent for the Foresters Hall, neither did they report that the Ramsgate Age Concern trust required reform early enough, even though they had a trustee in Cllr Jill Kirby whose main purpose was to give the alarm at the first sign of a failing trust, but who instead chose to silence concerns expressed by RTC councillors when they approached her. The inconsistency in charging Ramsgate Age Concern a reportedly £15k pa for use of Forester’s Hall whilst allowing Broadstairs Age Concern free accommodation needs some explanation. Had TDC informed Ramsgate Town Council at the outset of the problems, a reformed trust could have been formed in time to avert the closure. Ramsgate Town Council was kept most firmly in the dark on the grounds that for RTC to interfere would be prejudicial to the ongoing negotiations, with the result that this now very unsatisfactory result has been served up as a ‘fait accompli’.

Let us be clear, the Charity Commission is the body that decides on the governance of charitable trusts not TDC, KCC or any organisation purporting to advise on trust governance. Did anyone think to call the commission in before deciding on liquidation? The moral being in future must be; don’t let TDC serve on your trustee board as it will be bad for the health of your charity.

Kent County Council acted unreasonably in restricting decision making to a tiny cabal of officers and parties who will benefit from the demise of the trust. It has failed to understand that a reasonable service cannot be provided by parcelling up the frail and vulnerable and dropping them off at whatever is convenient to the service providers in Margate and Sandwich.

KCC has failed to act reasonably in consulting with local interests and has clearly acted on a preset fettered agenda, which tram lined action to save money irrespective of choice, localism,community well being or common sense.

It did not act openly and indeed restricted information to only a chosen few, leaving at least one local member uninformed of the true situation until everything had been decided beforehand.

Clearly here, the imperative to save money outweighed compassion for Ramsgate senior citizens.

Most culpable however, are the activities of Dover and Thanet Age Concern, and also other advisory bodies financed by KCC, whose prime purpose is to put service to the community first and yet we find they have torn a fellow charitable trust limb from limb and divided up the spoils between themselves and Margate.

One of these charitable organisations advising on this shambles has as its purpose the provision of guidance and assistance to those trusts in need of help on governance, but instead it assisted a pack of wolves in devouring one of their own,

So what are we to make of this situation?

· Ramsgate, a town of nearly 40,000 citizens, will have its old people trucked to where ever the kind individuals, who thought this scheme up can find a place for them.
· It will cost the individual pensioner more either in bus fares or fees and it will probably increase loneliness and isolation among the old, as many may not wish to travel to a day centre, but I doubt if any thought was given to that by the perpetrators of this deed.
· Ramsgate will lose its fair share of funding and of course the usual beneficiary will be Margate, not forgetting of course that well known centre of deprivation, Sandwich. It would appear that special efforts have been made to retain a commissioning role for Broadstairs Age Concern
· The good citizens of Ramsgate may well feel that the ‘big society’ means that the big and powerful grab the spoils and leave the vulnerable out in the cold and where is localism in all this?
· HM Government has expressed its view that services should be locally managed and not controlled by faceless bureaucrats. It seeks to promote the big society, where local organisations care for their communities. Yet in Ramsgate the opposite is the case, as this trust has been working for 46 years and yet it is to be destroyed in a thoughtless piece of vandalism so that everyone else need not make economies or think of innovative ways of providing a service.