Page 40 - BHTA 100 years

M“emories from... Stephen Blatchford
I joined Blatchford’s in September 1985, with a view of spending
three years learning the business before taking over from my father. Unfortunately, within 3 months he had passed away and that was right in the middle of the challenges thrown up by the McColl report and so I was thrown into the deep end both with the company and also the BSTA.
My father had made submissions to the McColl committee and then in April 1986 the Department of Health pre-empted the McColl report with a number of policies and we had some very dif cult discussions, both
as a company and also as the Association. In 1987, the Disablement Services Authority (DSA) was set up by the DoH with a remit to modernise the services by way of competitive tendering and to move the services from being part of the DoH to the NHS in a four year period.
That was a very dif cult period when the Association represented
the common interests of a number of competing companies. A legal challenge to the changes was made by one company and lost and the competitive tendering move completely changed the industry. BSTA provided a single place for the government to come and talk to the industry and we did get them to listen to what we were saying on a
few issues. When the DSA was in place, then the BSTA had a lot more in uence and we were able to get them to see sense on a number of subjects. More recently, in the numerous meetings we have had ab”out tariffs, BHTA has been able to positively in uence the outcomes
too.
BHTA 100 years