Page Resourcing says Medicom came calling after a significant UK Government contract and needed bodies for a new 120,000 sq ft Northampton manufacturing facility. Healthcare. Manufacturing. Pandemic pressure. First 100 hires before Christmas 2020. Page delivered 150 placements and called it a success. Lovely. Then TCAP read the case study, looked at the wider PPE procurement swamp, and noticed Page apparently calling Medicom “Mediacom” in its own fucking solution section. Page saw a recruitment trophy. TCAP saw the mask machine.
The Page Connection
Page Resourcing has a Medicom case study.
Not inferred. Or logo soup. Not Grok scraping the floor for crumbs. Page says that, following a significant contract with the UK Government, The Medicom Group needed a recruitment specialist to help populate a new 120,000 sq ft manufacturing facility in Northampton.
That is the hook.
Healthcare. Manufacturing. United Kingdom. Pandemic urgency. Government contract. Bodies needed quickly. Page says the project size was between 100 and 500 people, the timeframe was 12 months, and the result was 150 placements. Page also says Medicom needed up to 250 heads recruited by December 2021, with the first 100 hires in place by 15 December 2020.
That is not ordinary recruitment. That is recruitment with a timer on it, public money behind it, pandemic fear in the air, and a government contract humming in the background like a generator outside a field hospital.
The Pandemic Mask Machine
Medicom was not some little office asking for a payroll assistant.
The Medicom Group is a PPE and infection-control business. Masks, gloves, protective products, healthcare supply-chain oxygen. During COVID, that sector became a gold rush, a panic room and a procurement bin fire all at once.
Medicom’s own announcement said the British Government had enabled the UK investment through a long-term contractual commitment, with the factory expected to produce over 100 million FFP3 masks and over 500 million Type IIR medical masks for local UK needs. Business coverage later reported that the Northampton plant was already making more than 1.5 million face masks a day and that Medicom had an agreement with the UK Government to supply more than 600 million clinical masks for the NHS.
That is the context Page does not dwell on.
Page wants the case study to look like delivery. TCAP sees the clean end of the PPE panic: the bit where emergency public need becomes factories, contracts, recruitment plans, candidate packs, Teams meetings, microsites, PR and a polished little case study for Page to wave around after the sirens stopped.
Panic enters one end.
Case study comes out the other.
First 100 By Christmas
The timeline is the bit that makes it smell like crisis capitalism in a hi-vis vest.
First 100 hires by 15 December 2020. Up to 250 heads by December 2021. Page says Medicom invited three large agencies to pitch and chose Page Resourcing for its expertise, capability and, importantly, its “passion” for the challenge.
Passion.
Of course.
Nothing says “passion” like staffing the PPE machine while the country is counting deaths, nurses are reusing kit, ministers are throwing contracts into the emergency lane, and every opportunist with a spreadsheet and a mate near procurement has suddenly discovered a lifelong commitment to masks.
To be clear, TCAP is not saying Medicom supplied faulty PPE. TCAP is not saying Medicom is PPE Medpro. TCAP is not saying Medicom committed fraud. That is not the allegation.
The allegation is simpler.
Page turned a pandemic-government-contract staffing sprint into a shiny recruitment trophy, and TCAP is allowed to ask what kind of public-money atmosphere that trophy was sitting in.
Medicom, Mediacom And The Badge On The Box
And then comes the comedy.
In Page’s own case study, under “Our Solution”, Page says it built a delivery model with a dedicated team, a project director, candidate attraction across PageGroup websites, a candidate pack, PR coverage and online job advertising.
Then it says the candidate pack or brochure highlighted the EVP of the Mediacom Group.
Mediacom.
Not Medicom.
That is not a different shade of logo blue. That is Page apparently writing up a case study about staffing a pandemic PPE manufacturer and making it look like a media agency wandered into the mask factory with a latte.
Maybe it is a typo. A sloppy copy. Maybe someone in the content team saw “Medicom” and their fingers sprinted off to an advertising company. Fine.
But it is fucking funny.
Because this is a recruitment company boasting about precision, delivery, workforce planning, candidate attraction and stakeholder management, while apparently struggling to keep the client’s name from sliding into another company’s trousers.
Page did not just polish the mask machine.
It may have misspelled the badge.
Government Contracts Are Not Holy Water
Pandemic procurement was not a normal market.
It was fear, shortages, emergency powers, direct awards, suspended normal competition, global supply-chain panic, political pressure, collapsing stock levels, hospitals screaming for kit and ministers trying to look like they had a grip on the thing eating the country.
That does not make every supplier dirty. It does not make every contract corrupt. It does not make every factory a scandal.
But it does mean every corporate trophy from that period deserves a fucking torch under it.
The National Audit Office said government awarded around £18 billion of contracts using emergency procurement regulations in the months after COVID emerged in the UK. It also described government working at pace, at scale, and often with suppliers it had not previously used. PPE contracts accounted for most of that spend. The Public Accounts Committee later examined PPE Medpro, a private company referred through the High Priority Lane by Baroness Michelle Mone, and recorded that PPE Medpro received an £81 million mask contract and a £122 million gown contract.
That is the air this case study breathes.
Not because Medicom is PPE Medpro. It is not. This piece is careful about that.
But because the PPE era itself became a national symbol of emergency procurement without proper daylight. PPE Medpro became the poster child for the rancid circus, with Parliament, government, courts and media still picking through the bones years later.
Again, Medicom is not PPE Medpro.
That is exactly why this piece stays sharp.
The point is not that Medicom is Michelle Mone’s mess. The point is that Page’s Medicom trophy sits inside the same pandemic procurement atmosphere: emergency contracts, public money, speed, panic and the PPE gold rush where normal scrutiny went out the window wearing a disposable mask.
The Canada Aftertaste
The Medicom story also has a Canadian aftertaste.
The Medicom Group is Canadian-rooted, and the Canadian public record says Medicom committed to a 10-year federal contract to supply N95 respirators and level 3 earloop surgical masks. Canada framed that deal as domestic resilience, local capacity and supply-chain security after the pandemic exposed how quickly global sourcing can turn into “your masks are stuck somewhere else”.
That part is not scandal. It is state reliance.
Then the engineering universe turns up. AtkinsRéalis, formerly SNC-Lavalin, says it worked alongside Medicom to engineer its first critical mask manufacturing facility in Montréal. Healthcare workers needed protective equipment fast. The project demanded short timelines, feasibility work and a multidisciplinary team operating under pandemic conditions.
That does not make Medicom dirty. It does not prove wrongdoing. And does not transform a Canadian factory into a UK procurement scandal.
It does, however, add flavour to the same public-contracting stew: government urgency, domestic PPE production, long-term supply commitments, fast factory mobilisation, and controversial corporate names drifting around the machinery.
SNC-Lavalin’s own baggage was not invented by TCAP. A division pleaded guilty to fraud in relation to Libya work and received a CA$280 million fine and three-year probation order. That is not Medicom’s conviction. It is not Page’s conviction. Or the UK factory’s conviction.
It is just the sort of aftertaste that makes pandemic public-contracting stories feel less like clean corporate brochures and more like something that should be handled with gloves.
The Page Partners Pattern
This is where Page Partners has gone now.
Imperial was recruitment smoke for the cancer factory. BAT was the second black lung. HSBC was PageGroup’s cartel-laundry banker. Evonik was the chemical family tree from hell. The disability case study was the inclusion trophy cabinet. Vivo Telefônica was the cartel-fined phone shop. Neon was the data-leak bank. Walmart was the bribe-slick superstore. PicPay was the beef-baron banking app. OneAdvanced was the NHS 111 ransomware hangover. Samsung was the $300 million memory cartel.
Medicom is the pandemic mask machine.
Different room. Same Page habit.
Find the shiny client. Polish the project. Count the hires. Write the case study. Leave the wider public stink outside the frame and hope nobody drags it back into the room by the ankles.
Page keeps selling delivery.
TCAP keeps asking what the delivery was plugged into.
The Question For Page
Why Medicom?
And why this pandemic PPE trophy?
Why turn a significant UK Government contract, a 120,000 sq ft Northampton facility and emergency healthcare/manufacturing staffing into a Page success story without any meaningful context about the PPE procurement atmosphere it sat inside?
So did anyone at Page ask about the wider COVID contract swamp?
Did anyone ask whether “first 100 hires before Christmas 2020” sounds less like ordinary recruitment excellence and more like emergency state capacity being stapled together at speed?
And did anyone ask why the case study appears to call Medicom “Mediacom” in the solution section?
Did anyone at the recruitment experts check the fucking client name?
Or did Page just smell government contract, pandemic urgency, 150 placements, national press coverage and a chance to put another trophy on the shelf?
Because from here, it looks simple.
Page saw a staffing challenge.
TCAP saw the mask machine.
And someone at Page apparently saw Mediacom.
The Closing Pack
Page Resourcing can keep the Medicom case study.
Significant UK Government contract. 120,000 sq ft Northampton facility. Healthcare. Manufacturing. First 100 hires by 15 December 2020. Up to 250 heads by December 2021. 150 placements. 5% under budget. 16 days average time to hire. 250,000 visits to the advertising site. Fourteen press articles. Weekly Teams meetings. Workforce plan. Candidate pack.
Lovely.
But TCAP is not reading it like a recruitment manager.
TCAP is reading it like someone who remembers the pandemic PPE swamp, the emergency-contract panic, the emergency-procurement stink, the public-money bonfire, and the way every clean little corporate story from that era deserves a latex-gloved inspection.
Medicom may not be PPE Medpro.
Fine.
That makes Page’s own cock-up even funnier.
Because the recruitment experts staffing the pandemic mask machine appear to have produced a case study where Medicom becomes Mediacom.
That is not just a typo.
That is the receipt wearing the wrong mask.
Unredacted.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
- Page Resourcing – 150 placements for Medicom Group to populate a new manufacturing facility in the UK
- Medicom – Medicom Announces UK Mask Manufacturing Facility in Alliance with British Government
- Business MK – PPE manufacturer creates 250 new jobs as it opens its first UK factory
- National Audit Office – Investigation into government procurement during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Committee of Public Accounts – PPE Medpro: awarding of contracts during the pandemic
- The Guardian – Will UK taxpayers get their £122m back from PPE Medpro?
- Public Services and Procurement Canada – Medicom Group supporting Canada’s efforts to combat COVID-19
- AtkinsRéalis – Medicom N95 Mask Facility in Canada
- Osler – Turning the Page? SNC Pleads Guilty to Fraud Relating to Libya Work