US owner of healthcare firm The Priory Group eyes £1bn sale amid scandal over quality of care April 21, 2019 The US healthcare firm behind The Priory Group is mulling a £1bn sale of the mental healthcare provider amid a scandal over the quality of care in its hospitals. Acadia Healthcare has appointed a financial adviser to explore a possible sale of the firm, the Mail on Sunday reported, citing City sources. Read more: Only [...]
Just ticking the wellbeing box isn’t enough April 10, 2019 According to the NHS, one in four people in the UK are likely to suffer from mental health issues over the course of their life. In London, where half a million people are employed, loneliness is becoming an increasingly damaging problem, with GPs calling it an epidemic “affecting all ages”. More than a social issue, [...]
Drones, Gatwick, and the future: how this new aerial technology can benefit the UK economy and the public good April 7, 2019 New technologies always stir emotion, and as we’ve seen with the drone incidents at Heathrow and Gatwick, they can even result in new legislation. Following the announcement by the government and Civil Aviation Authority regarding an extended no-fly zone and stop-and-search powers for police, it is clear that the time is right to increase our [...]
The Matrix was released 20 years ago – how close are we to the film’s vision of a tech dystopia? April 1, 2019 The Matrix first premiered in US cinemas yesterday 20 years ago. It revolutionised the way that we viewed the potential power of machines, and simultaneously marked the dawning of an age of suspicion and fear surrounding our relationship with technology. Yet far from the apocalyptic fears of artificial intelligence (AI), the applications of this emerging [...]
Veteran investor Michael Spencer in funding boost for femtech startup Elvie March 31, 2019 Former Conservative Party treasurer Michael Spencer is reportedly leading a funding round for female health start-up Elvie. Spencer’s private investment vehicle IPGL is backing the company with an investment worth around £20m, Sky reported this evening. Read more: Nex Group founder to invest millions in blood testing startup Elvie, which last year partnered with the [...]
NHS to banish pagers from its hospitals — but is this a good idea? March 20, 2019 | City Talk By Professor Andre Spicer, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Cass Business School. Remember pagers? Simple devices that were used fairly widely before the advent of mobile phones and SMS messaging. If you had a pager, you could receive simple messages, but you couldn’t reply. One of the few places you will find a pager today [...]
Liz Truss promises focus on ‘less sexy’ transport projects in spending review March 19, 2019 Treasury minister Liz Truss has taken a thinly-veiled swipe at her cabinet colleagues as she hit out at politicians telling people what to eat and how much to exercise. In a speech setting out her priorities for a review of spending in Whitehall, Truss said the government should not be telling “capable citizens” what to [...]
The UK government should take inspiration from an unlikely source when writing its post-Brexit migration plan March 19, 2019 Another day, another chance for UK politics to reach hitherto unimaginable levels of farce. But while Downing Street reels over speaker John Bercow's characteristically dramatic intervention, it's worth remembering that the government is capable of making a complete mess of many things – not just Brexit. Take immigration, for example. We have a Prime Minister who [...]
Capita takes on Brexit work as outsourcer kicks on with ‘radical’ turnaround plan March 14, 2019 Outsourcing giant Capita has admitted it is helping pick up some of the government’s slack in preparing for Brexit, as Whitehall continues scrambling to put contingency plans in place for a possible no-deal scenario. The outsourcer, which specialises in digital and IT-related services, has taken on several contracts, as the 29 March leaving date looms ever [...]
Public sector outsourcing giant Interserve stares into the abyss, 14 months on from Carillion’s collapse March 14, 2019 Interserve, one of the government’s biggest providers of public services, faces the possibility of going into administration tomorrow, as the firm holds a crunch shareholder vote on a potential rescue deal. The public sector outsourcing giant has been plunged into a brutal power struggle in recent weeks with its lead shareholder, US hedge fund Coltrane [...]