Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much Simon Holden, Chief Executive of NHS Property Services, has been paid for home to office travel expenses since taking up the post; for what reasons he is allowed to claim for such expenses; what salary he receives; and which other staff members at NHS Property Services claim for travel expenses.

It is standard practice for employees to claim the travel expenses incurred as a result of their work, including from their base for work to other locations. Simon Holden’s base for work is Nantwich in Cheshire.

As Chief Executive of NHS Property Services, a national business, Simon Holden travels frequently from his home base to the company’s head office in London and many of the company’s other offices and 4,000 properties across the country, meeting staff, tenants and stakeholders. His travel expenses are therefore significant, even though the Company’s expenses policy permits only standard class travel and overnight stays in hotels at £100 plus VAT per night. These limits are applied to all of the Company’s staff, including the Chief Executive.

NHS Property Services publishes the salary details of its Chief Executive, along with those of the rest of its board members, in its annual report and accounts, available on the company website at:

www.property.nhs.uk/about-us/publications/

For transparency purposes, the company has also begun publishing details of Mr Holden’s travel expenses, and those of the company’s other executive directors.

Expenses for the second quarter are still being audited and will be posted on the website in due course.

In 2013-14, its first year of operation, NHS Property Services was focused on setting up its systems and processes, and bringing together the systems and processes of 161 predecessor organisations. Collated figures for travel expenses for individual Directors of the company for this year are therefore not available; to establish them would require a manual trawl of every rail ticket and receipt, every expenses payment and claim over a twelve month period, which would incur disproportionate cost.

An important point to note however is that by Simon Holden not having a London based location, the Company saves a London Weighting allowance of £6,279.

NHS Property Services Ltd has been fully operational and has had a full complement of non-executive directors since 2013-14. The amounts paid to the Company’s non-executive directors is published in the Company’s annual report and accounts and is shown in the table below for the full year 2013-14; the part-year figures to the end of December 2014 are produced in the same format.

¹ Robin Williams joined the Company in April 2014.

² Pro rata – Charles Howeson resigned 31 December 2013: the whole time equivalent salary was £50,000 - £55,000.

³ Douglas Blausten received additional remuneration from 1 January 2014 – 31 March 2014 for role as Acting Chairman. His whole time equivalent pay for 2013-14 was £20,000 - £25,000.

⁴ Rachel Kentleton left the Company October 2014.

The pay levels of the company’s non-executive directors are determined by the Department of Health, taking into account market rates, the required expertise, and the time commitment of the roles.

Tim Litherland was employed as Head of Asset Information at Agenda for Change band 9. He left the company in July 2014, having originally transferred into the Company from a strategic health authority, when the latter was abolished under the Health and Social Care Act 2012. The role, which is now a permanent post in the company’s structure, consisted of managing the team that established the company’s estates information database and which collates, reviews and analyses the information relating to the 3,700 properties the company inherited from primary care trusts and strategic health authorities.

Charles Siddons is the company’s Head of Business Development, reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, Dennis Markey. Mr Siddons was appointed to that role after a competitive, internal recruitment process, and he receives a salary equivalent to NHS Agenda for Change band 8d. He is entitled to claim travel and accommodation expenses incurred as a result of his work in the same way as other employees of the company, and receives no additional benefits.

In summary, the role of Head of Business Development is to produce and implement the company’s operational delivery plan for facilities management. This includes the delivery of operational targets and the management of key projects.