6 Wednesday May 25 2022 | the times
News
As dawn broke over the seaside town of
Troon, near Glasgow, in late November
1996, dozens of police and customs offi-
cers made their move.
Concealed beneath newspapers in
boxes being unloaded by several men
from a fishing boat into a van were
three tonnes of cannabis resin “soap
bars” with a street value, police said, of
£20 million. Among those convicted
over the haul was John Smith, 41, de-
scribed in newspaper reports as a
“London-based businessman” with
connections on Spain’s Costa del Sol.
The judge said he had been one of the
ringleaders and sentenced him to 14
years in jail for drug smuggling, cut to 11
years on appeal.
Two decades later Smith, now in his
sixties, has been running a children’s
home in Essex. The home, operated by
PBS Care Homes Ltd, has raked in
more than £1.2 million in fees from local
authorities in Essex and Kent in two
years.
It is co-owned by Smith, who splits
his time between Britain and Spain, and
John Lawrence, who owns a second
children’s home with its own legal
troubles. Last year Lawrence’s son re-
signed as a director of the second home
after we revealed he had been prose-
cuted for carrying a large kitchen knife
behind the sun visor in his van.
Smith’s unlikely move into this indus-
try exposes failures in Ofsted’s vetting
procedures, which are meant to ensure
directors of companies running child-
ren’s homes are fit and proper. Sources
at the regulator said someone with a
criminal conviction involving a serious
drug offence should have been
screened out.
It is also a demonstration of the
profits that can be made by looking
after some of society’s most vulnerable
— a gold rush that has brought a flood
of first-time owners into the sector with
sometimes disastrous results.
lax checks and quick profits
The company owned by Smith and
Lawrence, PBS Care Homes Ltd, was
incorporated in September 2018.
Smith’s conviction was the result of a
sting set up when a fisherman hired to
bring the drugs ashore became an in-
formant and undercover customs offi-
cers were brought in to crew the boat.
The businessman had met the fisher-
man in London and Cadiz, with
instructions on where to meet a larger
vessel off the coast of Morocco to trans-
fer the drugs.
To secure registration for a children’s
home, Smith and Lawrence, like all di-
rectors, were required to submit to vet-
ting by Ofsted, the education regulator.
Although Ofsted may not legally re-
quire directors to submit to a criminal
record check, it tries to get round this by
requiring a detailed CV accounting for
everything the director has done since
leaving full-time education and con-
ducting interviews where appropriate.
Smith did not declare his time in jail,
and Ofsted approved him.
Other Ofsted checks, aimed at en-
suring the financial viability of new
homes, also have their limitations.
“There’s a form that they have that’s
called a financial reference. But most
banks won’t actually fill that form out
now,” a consultant who has extensive
experience in the sector said. “So
Ofsted accept a letter confirming that
tickets for a child known to be at high
risk of involvement in county lines drug
dealing. They were not “consistently
curious” about where children were ob-
taining cannabis despite being in a
high-risk area for gangs.
At another a child had developed a
relationship with someone on social
media without staff being aware or
carrying out any checks.poor management
and record-keeping
Homes with inexperienced owners can
struggle to recruit the right staff and
abide by the strict record-keeping obli-gations and requirements to notify the
authorities about incidents involving
children in their care. Some of the first-
time owners also served as the home’s
responsible individual.
One, Blessing Manyara, was singled
out for criticism in Ofsted reports. He
and his wife own The Spring Children’s
and Transitional Care Ltd in Birming-
ham. The company runs two children’s
homes that have earned more than
£1.1 million in fees from the local
council since 2017.
Manyara is a qualified special-needs
teacher who also goes by the name Dr
Blessing Bloomberg and is linked to theEnlightened Christian Gathering. He is
a former director of the church’s UK
company alongside its leader, Shep-
herd Bushiri. Bushiri, Africa’s wealthi-
est preacher, has claimed to cure HIV,
make the blind see and walk on air. He
faces fraud and money-laundering
charges in South Africa.
Although Manyara has worked as a
children’s services manager in the West
Midlands, he had never owned or run a
children’s home. The company’s first
home has been deemed inadequate in
all but one of its inspections and has
been banned from accepting children
since April last year. The regulatorBoy unwashed for months without a home-cooked meal
Inspectors who visited a
children’s home in Bolton
set up by Robert
McGuinness, a first-time
owner who had worked as a
plasterer and run a cocktail
bar, were so horrified that it
was immediately closed.
A boy there had not
bathed, changed clothes or
been given a home-cooked
meal for four months. Staff
had not been into his room
and an Ofsted report
described flies and a
“pungent smell” spreadingthrough the home. Another
child had been put at risk of
harm by staff carrying out
CPR unnecessarily.
McGuinness blamed an
experienced operations
director who he said
“assured me the service
was run well at all times”. In
the six months the home
was open between August
last year and the inspection
in January, it received
£145,200 from Bolton
council. The council said the
home had “undergone duediligence and all the
appropriate checks to be
registered with Ofsted as a
suitable provider”.
Another home opened by
a Merseyside electrician
was deemed “inadequate”
within four months of
opening late last year.
Lewis McCoy, 32, who is
also a part-time DJ with no
background in the sector,
set up Contemporary
Concept Care Limited, and
bought a dilapidated
£45,000 house in a formermining town in Lancashire.
Inspectors found that,
despite renovations, a
bedroom was in poor repair
and the recruitment and
vetting of staff was unsafe.
Poor decision-making by
staff meant a child had
gone missing for six days.
The home has acted to cut
the risk of the child going
missing but Ofsted said
recruitment procedures
“remain a serious concern”.
McCoy did not respond to a
request for comment.News Times investigation
From drug runner to children’s
you’ve got a business bank account, and
the date that you’ve had that bank ac-
count from, and as long as your cash
flow forecast matches up, they don’t ask
any further questions at registration
stage. They don’t actually ask to see
your bank statements or anything.”
Despite the risks to children if an
owner suddenly goes bust, financial
checks can be limited to confirmation
that the would-be owner has a business
bank account, without any information
about the account’s balance and whe-
ther it holds sufficient funds.
Smith and Lawrence did not respond
to a request for comment but a source
said they had been attracted to the
sector by the profits that could be made.
The home run by PBS has three places
for children with complex needs and
was rated “good” after its most recent
inspection.
“If you’ve got a two-bedroom home,
on average you can probably make
local authorities pay you between
£6,000 and £8,000 a week per bed-
room,” the consultant said. With
running costs of about £19,000 to
£24,000 a month including staff, a com-
pany running a two-bedroom home
can easily clear profits of £250,000 a
year even if it is not constantly at full
occupancy.
Several bosses of children’s homes
flaunt their wealth on social media,
posting photos of luxury cars and ex-
pensive watches. One owner, Mahesh
Mehan, drives a McLaren supercar
worth more than £120,000.
He moved into the industry in 2006
from a career in sales and set up Aston
Children’s Care, named after Aston
Martin, his favourite car marque, in- It now has seven homes and has
received more than £10 million in fees
from local authorities since January
Mehan, 51, is the company’s designat-
ed “responsible individual” and was sin-
gled out for criticism in a recent Ofsted
inspection of one home.
The home, which opened in 2019,
was rated inadequate last September.
An inspection found that it was failing
to look after children and was in poor
condition. The Ofsted report said it was
“dirty, plaster is missing from the walls,
exposed wires create a potential risk
and some children’s bedrooms are in a
poor condition”. The front door had
been left wide open, allowing inspec-
tors to walk in unchallenged.
The home’s rating was upgraded to
“requires improvement to be good” in
November, but inspectors issued a
compliance notice because Mehan had
“failed to have sufficient oversight of
the management of the home to ensure
regulatory compliance [and] consist-
ently failed to take sufficient action to
meet compliance notices”. Mehan said
it was a “hard sector to be in” and,
because he was the responsible individ-
ual, the “buck stops with me”. He said
he had business interests in property
development that had contributed to
his wealth.
Our investigation has found at least
20 children’s homes opened by com-
pany directors with a troubled history
in the sector or with little or no experi-
ence of running a children’s home.
They have charged at least £52 million
in fees while Ofsted reports paint a pic-
ture of failing homes employing under-
qualified and untrained staff.
In the worst cases inspectors have
found homes where children have been
mistreated or neglected and allowed to
go missing for extended periods. Those
living in care are at risk of exploitation
by sex offenders and criminal gangs but
Ofsted reports show staff at some
homes have failed to assess and mini-
mise these risks.
At one home staff bought train
Young people are at
risk in a sector offering
big money and drawing
in unlikely owners,
Billy Kenber writes