Shocked at news of Virgin Care takeover

I was shocked to hear that Virgin Care has been acquired by private equity company Twenty20 Capital and has been rebranded as HCRG Care Group. Local health and care staff were also shocked, as they were not given any prior warning of the takeover.

Astonishingly, commissioners of the contract, B&NES Council and Bath, Swindon & Wiltshire Clinical Commissioning Group (BSW CCG) were not given any prior warning by Virgin Care executives either, despite commissioners having met only three weeks ago to agree the extension of Virgin Care’s contract to deliver community health and care services to 2027, adding £160 million value to its existing sevenyear £700 million contract.

I’m part of local campaign group Protect our NHS BANES (PONHS). We are very unhappy about a private equity company now owning our community health and care service provider. Twenty20’s website states: “We look for high return opportunities across a broad range of situations”. What does this mean for HCRG Care Group? Will there be cuts in staff and services in order to boost profits?

We are very concerned on behalf of BANES’ health and care staff, already having faced a hugely challenging pandemic and now with yet another employer. Many of these staff were transferred from NHS and local authority employment into Sirona Care CIC in 2011, then to Virgin Care Ltd in 2017 and now to HCRG Care Group/ Twenty20 Capital. It is crucial that staff terms and conditions are maintained and pay/pensions/ benefits not eroded under the new regime.

B&NES and BSW CCG have issued a statement saying that they will “carefully consider this announcement and any impact on the contract it may have”. They have previously referred to Virgin Care as ‘valued partners’ in the newly set up BSW Integrated Care System (ICS) Partnership Board and promoted ‘transparency’ as a key ethos for the ICS. Virgin Care executives appear either to have misunderstood or ignored this ethos. Their behaviour is at odds with the standards expected of a provider of publicly funded health and social care services.

We sincerely hope that B&NES and BSW CCG will find a way to rectify this situation to the benefit of patients, staff and tax payers, rather than to the benefit of private business.

Paula Riseborough Bath

■ My personal feelings in regards to the takeover of Virgin Care and the £54 million deal that the local authority has signed for, is a hard business lesson for the local authority and Bath, Swindon & Wiltshire Clinical Commissioning Group (BSW CCG).

BSW CCG is mainly run by medical profession personnel. I believe they might not have the business skills that you can get from non medical profession. If you look at the big picture of what is going on in the Virgin Group and what ideas Sir Richard Branson could have in for the future of Vrigin Group, for example space flights.

As the space flight business is not cheap and the economy has suffered from the Covid scenario, then most people could have foreseen that sometime in the future Vrigin Group would need to sell part of the group to reinvest for the future development like space flights.

All businesses large and small need to take a step back so they can take a good look at themselves. It is hard to criticize yourself but you need to, in order to move forward.

So the local authority has no choice in my opinion but to honour their contract and the BSW CCG which is due to change next year need to either incorporate nonmedical professionals in everyday activities or have a non executive board that can oversee what is going on and point out things. Debbie Clifton Twerton

■ What on earth is going on? I have just learnt that Virgin Care has been sold to Twenty20 Capital.

Last month the council agreed to extend Virgin’s contract, who, as I recollect, promised when first awarded this contract to plough any profits back into social care provision. Where does this leave us now? I quote from Twenty20’s statement

“Virgin Care is our seventh acquisition this year adding £260m of revenue to our growing portfolio of businesses.”

They are a private equity company whose primary objective is to reward their investors. Did the council know about the proposed sale when they extended Virgin’s contract, if so why has it not been mentioned?

Millions of pounds of taxpayers money is being shovelled around between private companies with seemingly very little public scrutiny.

BANES residents are being denied the opportunity to have a say in who provides the social care and other services that Virgin have decided to divest themselves of.

I find it absolutely astonishing that within three weeks of signing a three-year extension to their contract, Virgin can sell that contract to a private equity company without the council’s knowledge. If the council knew beforehand, why was the contract renewed without going to tender?

It’s time for the council to consider bringing services back into public governance instead of being complicit in the opaque, undemocratic, wheeling and dealing of opportunistic private equity companies.

J. vernon

Bath