Leader’s ‘demand’ for Trust bosses to be removed

Council Leader, Councillor Colin Lambert

The Leader of Rochdale Council, Councillor Colin Lambert, has written a letter to top health bosses demanding that the Chief Executive of the Pennine Acute Hospital’s Trust and the Chairman of the Trust be removed.

The Trust runs the Rochdale Infirmary, Fairfield General Hospital, Royal Oldham and North Manchester General Hospital.

Speaking at a meeting of the Council, Councillor Lambert, said: “We have expressed through motions in this Council a lack of faith in the Pennine Acute Hospitals Trust and I would like to inform the Council that I have today taken the decision to write to the Chief Executive of NHS North demanding the removal of the Chief Executive and Chair of Pennine Acute and I will be looking to see if that can get support across all the Council; the details of which I will discuss with the party leaders and they can share with their members.”

In the letter Councillor Lambert says he is calling for Chief Executive, John Saxby, and Board Chairman, John Jesky, to be dismissed because of the “continual failure of the Pennine Acute Hospitals Trust to deliver commissioned services and their continual failure to meet the required 18 week targets along with no sight of a coherent recovery plan.”

The letter adds: “NHS North shall implement an Emergency Recovery Plan covering the Trust or you will leave me with no option other than to approach other council leaders in Greater Manchester to call for the break up of the Trust.”

The move isn’t the first time the Council has showed a lack of faith in the Trust. Last year they took a vote of no confidence over the Trust’s management, Councillor Jean Ashworth has organised petitions and a protest march and Councillor Lambert has called for Rochdale Infirmary to break away from the Trust.

The letter comes in the wake of news that the Trust has been placed on red alert for its finances and needs to make a further £13million of savings, bringing its total savings, to be implemented by April to approximately £56million.

A spokesperson for The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said: “We have seen many changes to our services across all our hospitals, particularly over the past two years. Our doctors, nurses and midwives have led these changes to make sure they can continue to provide safe and high quality care to our patients. The healthcare changes that have happened in Rochdale have been part of the wider Greater Manchester Healthy Futures and Making it Better programmes which were agreed five years ago. We have almost completed all the changes and new developments set out under these programmes.

“Rochdale Infirmary continues to provide a large number of services and more are planned for the future. Current services include day case surgery, out-patient and antenatal and postnatal clinics, access to physiotherapy, occupational therapy and radiology. There is also the overnight and short stay Clinical Assessment Unit and Urgent Care Centre (UCC) for people self presenting with minor injuries and illness which both opened in April last year. The Ophthalmology Service, currently based at Birch Hill Hospital, will transfer to Rochdale Infirmary later this year and a new specialist Rheumatology service at the Infirmary which will serve as a multi-disciplinary centre for rheumatology care across the area is being planned to open by Summer.

“The whole public sector, including the NHS and local councils, are facing huge financial challenges. We, like other hospital trusts, are not immune to this. Nationally the NHS needs to save £20bn by 2015. This financial year we had save £43m and we have found £41m of that so far, all without affecting the quality of care we provide. On top of this, however, our local Primary Care Trusts (PCT) who pay us for our services, are sending less patients to the Trust this year for certain planned outpatient and surgical procedures. We therefore need to reduce our budget by that amount – which is a further £21m.”