SPORTS: WE UNCOVER FUNDING

Sports have long been deemed to be a major factor in bridging divides, keeping people active and generally being at the heart of communities across the region, so we decided to have a look into the funding of sports by SportsNI.

There were some odd outcomes, such as ‘Tug of War’ being allocated more funding than Volleyball for example.

As you can see, anything from American Football to Rambling to Dodgeball have been granted some funds in the last five years.

‘Multi Sports’ far outstrips any other funded sport at £20,977,586.77.  As part of this wide ranging funding portfolio, £1,429,164.61 has been spent on 3G pitches and MUGA facilities.  Projects such as the refurbishment of the Alpha Hall in Lisburn and projects in Ballynahinch have been subject to major funding.

The most funding for an individual sport goes to Association Football – it has been granted a total of £7,574,729.83 since 2011.  It is followed by Boxing surprisingly, which has received £6,988,550.53.

Gaelic Sports were given £5,245,330.84 in the 2011-16 period, excluding Camogie which was given £273,696.

The top sports that have been granted over £1 million in total since 2011 are as follows:

 

VESTING LAND: HOW MUCH DOES IT COST YOU?

Vesting Orders are statutory instruments that are used to buy, not necessarily with the permission of the owner, land which public bodies require – for example to build roads.  Owners are then compensated for the land by the relevant NI Executive Department.

Given large scale infrastructure projects such as the Magherafelt bypass and the Shore Road in Greenisland are ongoing, and the A5 and A6 projects are due to progress in the not to distant future, we undertook to see how much the vesting of the land used for these projects is costing the public purse.

In the last five years, a whopping £14 million pounds have been spent just vesting land for infrastructure projects by the Department of Regional Development – that is before any work takes place to actually construct the projects.

The largest of these projects is the A8 Belfast to Larne Dualling, the vesting of its 394 acres cost taxpayers almost £6.5 million pounds (£6,353,798.05).

The A2 Shore Road project in Greenisland is second, costing £3.24m for just 28.66 acres.

Dunlady Road’s Park and Ride Scheme in Dundonald cost £1.531m for just over 6 acres of land.  It is followed by a much larger scheme – the Magherafelt Bypass where the land of 30 landowners was vested at a cost of £1.22m for 83.25 acres.

A huge variance is cost per acre depending on where the land is vested.

 

INVESTNI: ‘CLAWBACK’ RECORD REVEALED

The scale of the money lost by InvestNI when companies they have aided go to the wall is shocking, but small compared to the amount actually clawed back by the organisation, BtP can reveal today.

Less than 4% of all the money granted to companies who have then gone out of business for one reason or another has been regained by the organisation, which means the public has suffered a catastrophic loss.

Over one and a half million pounds was granted to companies since 2011 that has now closed.  As part of the letters of offer for aid, companies are required to pay back grants.

InvestNI told us:

Clawback is triggered when a company defaults on the conditions in the letter of offer for financial assistance. In a significant number of cases the act of default is company closure. The ability to clawback financial assistance paid to a company is normally limited to the five year period prior to default, and given that in many cases the company has gone into liquidation the ability to recover funds is limited.

Since 2011, 29 companies have been the subject of clawbacks, with aid totalling £1.65m.  The biggest debt owed is from the Limavady Gear Company, which went into administration in October 2010 – it owes almost £330,000.

Also included on the list is Mivan, the construction firm which closed in January 2014 with the loss of almost 300 jobs.  It owes InvestNI – and thus the public, a whopping £222k.  Documents from Companies house dated March 2014 show that at the time it still owed InvestNI over £73k.

Some of these businesses were hailed at the time, and attracted vast sums of public money in aid, such as Mediasmiths International which was offered £75k when it came to Belfast in 2011 and was welcomed by then Enterprise Minister, Arlene Foster. (Source)

Despite the enormous outstanding debts, a meagre 3.7% of the total bill has been settled by the the companies or their administrators.  In fact, just two companies have paid back the aid they were granted, totalling just £55,456.

We have been told that 8 of the companies debts have been ‘written off’ and 19 are still outstanding.  At present, no court costs have been paid by InvestNI to regain the money granted to these companies.

Here is the full list from InvestNI and how much the respective former businesses owe:

You will notice we have blanked out a company name in the 2013-14 year, this is due to an ongoing legal case, and we’d rather not get sued.

 

REVEALED: ABUSE ALLEGATIONS IN SOCIAL CARE

In light of a number of investigations by the BBC and other organisations into care homes for the elderly, and those with disabilities, BtP has undertaken an investigation of complaints made to the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) responsible for regulating the health and social care sector which includes children’s homes, nursing homes and residential care homes.

We asked the RQIA, since 2011, how many complaints have been made on the basis of the following:

• Theft
• Abuse (physical or mental)
  Fraud
• Assault (physical or sexual)

RQIA told us they would respond on the basis of how they record incidents, under the banners;

•  A1: Theft or burglary
•  G6.1: Allegation of Misconduct (Physical)
•  G6.3: Allegation of Misconduct (Psychological/Emotional)
•  G6.4: Allegation of Misconduct (Financial/Material)
•  G6.2: Allegation of Misconduct (Sexual)

Since 2011, almost 4,000 complaints in total have been made by users of those services.  RQIA provided us with the complaints made broken down by Health Trust area, and it must be said that these are allegations – we have no way of knowing if these have been substantiated given the PSNI role and the confidentiality around such investigations.

Belfast has seen 898 complaints made to RQIA since 2011, the majority of these, 412, are for physical misconduct which could involve physical abuse. 153 instances of psychological abuse and the same number of allegations of theft or fraud were made within the trust area.

The Northern Trust is the largest Trust geographically in NI, covering four council areas.  691 complaints have been made to RQIA from this area since 2011.  The trend of allegations of physical misconduct being the highest recorded complaint continues here, with 339 complaints made on this basis.  125 complaints of allegations of psychological misconduct were made over that period also.

The South Eastern Trust has the highest overall number of complaints at 1,015, and bar far the highest number of allegations of physical misconduct at 511.  In fact, apart from allegations of theft or burglary, this Trust has the highest number of complaints across all categories.  107 of financial/material misconduct, 183 on psychological misconduct and 88 of sexual misconduct.  It is also worth nothing, that although not broken down by where complaints came from, the South Eastern Trust also provides healthcare services to all NI Prison Service institutions.

552 complaints in total were made in the Southern Trust area, again the majority of these allegations of physical misconduct – 227.  108 complaints alleging psychological misconduct were also made in the period.

200 allegations of physical misconduct were made in the Western Trust, and 91 of allegations of psychological misconduct making up more than half of the 450 total complaints made in the period.

Concerning, no?