End of the Line for Healthwatch Hartlepool: The Quango Critics Say Should Never Have Existed..
- teessidetoday
- Dec 8
- 5 min read
From Contract Scandal to Closure: Healthwatch Hartlepool’s Days Are Numbered, as the Government Announces Plans to Abolish The Quango many say has merely Lined the Pockets of Those Running it...
8th Dec 2025
The Labour Government’s is reportedly getting set to announce plans which would see Healthwatch England and the 152 local Healthwatch bodies across the country– including Healthwatch Hartlepool – officially scrapped, but the closures, according to a Labour source "will not happen overnight".
In late June 2025, the Government confirmed – via the NHS 10-Year Health Plan and the Dash Review of patient safety – that it intends to abolish Healthwatch England as a national body, seeing with it the abolition of local Healthwatch organisations “in their current form”. The move would transfer Healthwatch England’s functions into the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), as well as NHS Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and local councils.
The Department of Health and Social Care has confirmed in its response to a national petition that this means closing Healthwatch England and local Healthwatch as statutory bodies once legislation is in parliament is passed, moving their powers to the Secretary of State, ICBs and councils. At national level, the direction of travel is clear: Healthwatch as an independent statutory voice will finally be dismantled and brought “in-house”.
When are the closures likely to happen?
The Teesside & Durham Post Understands that there is still currently no Act of Parliament in force that allows the abolition of Healthwatch. Until that law is changed, local councils are still legally required to continue commissioning a local Healthwatch service. Internal briefings and council papers do dive at least some insight as to a potential timetable give a working timetable with a report seen by one of our reporters suggesting that the closure of Healthwatch will be around October 2026. The same paper notes that Healthwatch England expects its strategic functions to be transferred into Government over “the next 12–18 months or so”,
How much does Healthwatch Hartlepool cost local taxpayers?
Despite being registered as 'a charity', Healthwatch Hartlepool is not funded by donations or membership fees. Its own Charity Commission filings state that it is solely funded by Hartlepool Borough Council as a commissioned service to deliver what it claims is "a statutory Local Healthwatch role".
Council and charity documents show the scale of that funding over time, where in In 2013/14, when Healthwatch Hartlepool was set up, Hartlepool Borough Council provided A contract worth £109,751, plus A further grant of £16,000, giving total income of £125,751 in that first year. By 2019/20 and 2020/21, the council’s contract value was £116,150 per year for the Healthwatch Hartlepool service. In 2021/22, the contract value is shown as £86,596, again with Healthwatch Hartlepool described as a commissioned service.
For a town the size of Hartlepool, those are significant sums being channelled annually into a single arm’s-length body, which is why many residents refer to Healthwatch Hartlepool as one of the town’s most expensive local quangos – an organisation funded by the council but sitting just outside it in organisational terms.
Healthwatch Hartlepool’s trustees, for their part, stress that all funds are used to meet their contractual obligations to the council and to deliver their statutory objectives, however the 'charities' commissioned work to salary ratio suggests the business is heavily leaned towards its top end management, leaving volunteers effectively 'doing all the donkey work'...
The 2016 row over how the contract was awarded
A big part of the local controversy goes back to a high-profile row reported by a local newspaper in March 2016, where the then Labour leader of Hartlepool Borough Council, Councillor Christopher Akers-Belcher, was also a manager at Hartlepool Voluntary Development Agency (HVDA). Hartlepool Borough Council had awarded a contract worth about £140,000 for Healthwatch services under an agreement dating from 2013, originally to HVDA. By early 2016, a new Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) called Healthwatch Hartlepool had been registered with the Charity Commission. Opposition councillors raised questions at full council about whether the council’s normal tender rules for contracts over £100,000 had been followed; and How a newly-registered CIO could meet requirements such as having two years of audited accounts.
Local news reported that, Councillor Jonathan Brash said he had received informal complaints from members of the public and asked for clarity, stating on the record that he was not making accusations but wanted the facts. Councillor Paul Thompson questioned how an organisation “only six weeks old” could possibly have passed financial checks. The council’s then chief solicitor Peter Devlin confirmed that the concerns would be investigated. Crucially, the council's Labour leadership strongly rejected any suggestion of wrongdoing with Councillor Akers-Belcher describing the opposition comments as “vexatious” and said it was “a blatant untruth” to suggest that due process had not been followed.
A council spokesman at the time stated that:
The contract had originally been awarded to HVDA in 2013 following an open tender in line with procurement rules.
The Healthwatch Hartlepool CIO had been set up as a social enterprise in line with the Health and Social Care Act 2012.
The agreement would simply be “assigned in its entirety” from HVDA to the new Healthwatch Hartlepool CIO from 1 April 2016, which the council was satisfied complied with its processes.
Why many locals see Healthwatch Hartlepool as a “quango empire”...
Since 2013, Healthwatch Hartlepool has effectively operated as A charity whose only significant income is the annual contract from Hartlepool Borough Council raising serious questions as to whether the legal definition of 'a charity' applies to Healthwatch Hartlepool, or any of the 150 local Healthwatch Branches. The most concerning aspect of it is that Healthwatch Hartlepool as a body has staff and trustees which have, at times, included people with direct links to the council or local political life, as acknowledged in the council’s own related-party disclosures, with at least one now former Labour Councillor tied to the orgainsation previously investigated by police over concerns his election to Hartlepool Borough Council was "politically sensitive"...
The 'charities' Independence has been repeatedly brought into question: as an organisation that depends entirely on Civic Centre funding, and which the senior figures overlapping with council politics, not to mention the Value for money question With contracts historically in the £80k–£120k per year range, and some residents questioning whether Hartlepool gets enough real, practical impact for the money – or whether this has become a comfortable, semi-permanent consultancy funded from already stretched social care budgets.
Its claimed over time, people have seen Healthwatch Hartlepool as part of a wider pattern of “arms-length” bodies and “commissioned services” where public money is handed to off-shoot organisations rather than being spent directly on frontline services.
On the other side of the argument, Healthwatch Hartlepool points to its annual reports and project work – on home care, direct care and support services, and care home visits – as evidence that it delivers meaningful scrutiny and amplifies residents’ voices.
For now, Healthwatch Hartlepool is still operating as a commissioned service, funded directly by Hartlepool Borough Council. But the Government’s direction is clear: unless Parliament is forced to change course, the Healthwatch model – nationally and locally – will be dismantled over the next couple of years, ending the gravy train for some of Hartlepool's most controversial political figures.
In Hartlepool, that means one of the town’s most high-profile quangos, and one of its more controversial council contracts, is living on borrowed time.
