Nice Work for Some

Private Eye has been scrutinising some of the outsourcing companies again. It notes that Working Links, which got three Work Programme contracts, has been caught over-claiming job outcomes in Merseyside. The company claimed for 85 recent job starts which people had secured before any intervention by Working Links.

But the Eye is even more interested in the finances of A4e. Three of its directors are paid through schemes which are common enough for the highly paid but not available to the rest of us. "In the last two years international director Roy Newey has been paid £662,000 through a company called Roy Newey Ltd," says the article, and two non-executive directors had similar arrangements. It goes on: "Newey paid himself NIC-free dividends totalling £326,000".

A4e paid Emma Harrison and her husband's conference management company Andromeda Park Ltd £462,000 last year, another of the couple's companies, Thornbridge Ltd, £627,000 for the lease of a building, and £81,000 rent on a property owned by the couple's pension scheme. And that was before profits after tax for A4e of £6.2m." A4e is definitely improving some people's lives!