A man who was a hospice chief executive for ten years has been jailed for fabricating qualifications on his CV, and earning over £1m as a result.
Jon Andrewes, 63, a former builder, was jailed for two years on Monday at Exeter Crown Court. He had lied on his CV to get roles including as chief executive of St Margaret's Hospice in Somerset for ten years, and then as the chair of two seperate NHS Trusts.
He claimed to have a doctorate in management, an MBA and a master’s degree, when his only academic qualification was a diploma in social work.
Andrewes pleaded guilty to fraud and obtaining money by deception between 2004 and 2016. He had lied about his qualifications to obtain work, and more than £1m in remuneration, as a chief executive of St Margaret’s Hospice in Somerset in 2004, of chairman of Torbay Care Trust in 2007, and chairman of the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trusts in 2015.
The Times reported that the court heard how Andrewes had begun to embellish his CV in 2004, when he claimed to have a PhD from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh when he applied for the hospice job.
He had also claimed that before entering health care he had worked for the Home Office, but the court heard that his previous roles were as a builder, social worker and probation office.
He pleaded guilty to two charges of dishonestly making a false representation in relation to gain in his applications to the Torbay and Cornwall posts. He also pleaded guilty to making a financial gain at St Margaret’s Hospice. He was sentences to two years for each offence, to run concurrently.
Sentencing, Judge Geoffrey Mercer QC, said: “Your outwardly prestigious life was based upon a lie, and more accurately a series of staggering lies.
“They were repeated lies about your education and employment background and your experience, lies by which you obtained responsible positions which you at least probably, if not certainly, would not have otherwise obtained; positions in which honesty and integrity were essential qualities.”
Speaking for the prosecution, Cameron Brown said: “He had numerous opportunities to come clean, but failed to do so. This case has caused significant and understandable embarrassment to the NHS.”
Role at hospice 'non-clinical'
Ann Lee, chief executive of St Margaret's Hospice, Somerset, said: "When Mr Andrewes was appointed as our chief executive we carried out the normal employment due diligence checks that you would expect around any such senior appointment and we acted entirely in good faith throughout, given the information presented to us at the time.
"It goes without saying how shocked and deeply saddened we all are by the actions of our former chief executive. However I would like to stress that Mr Andrewes role was non-clinical throughout the 10 years that he spent at St Margaret’s Hospice, and therefore we can say that patient care was not affected during this time.
"We are now only looking to the future, and as always our focus remains totally on the care and support of our patients and their families”.
In a statement a Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust spokesman said: "Jon Andrewes was appointed to a non-executive position in Torbay by the NHS Trust Development Authority. This case shows that the NHS takes fraud very seriously and is prepared not just to tackle it but to pursue it through the legal system."
A spokeswoman from Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust said: “Jon Andrewes was appointed as Chairman of Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust by the then NHS Trust Development Authority in July 2015, following eight years in a similar non-executive role elsewhere in the NHS. During his 12 months at RCHT no concerns were raised with the Trust.”
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