Struggling NHS trust hit as boss departs

Health chiefs have said that Ed Anderson will step down as chairman of the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust next month. His departure follows that last week of chief executive Julia Squire.

It emerged last month that an independent review of finances at the trust, which runs hospitals in Wakefield, Pontefract and Dewsbury, had discovered it faces a £20m deficit in 2011-12.

Management has also come under fire for closing A&E at Pontefract hospital overnight since November. The trust is also embarking a major review of services following the opening of two new hospitals in Wakefield and Pontefract which is likely to see a wholescale reconfiguration of care including the permanent closure of casualty in Pontefract.

Kathryn Riddle, chairman of NHS North of England, said: “Ed Anderson indicated to me last spring that he wished to stand down as chairman of the Mid Yorkshire trust due to his other commitments.

“I am most grateful to Ed for agreeing to continue in post since then so that a successor could be identified. I also greatly appreciate Ed’s significant contribution to the trust during his time as chairman.”

The former boss at Leeds-Bradford Airport, he was appointed to the trust in 2009 and is chairman of Yorkshire Building Society.

The trust’s new acting chairman will be the highly-experienced David Stone who last year retired after more than a decade as chairman of the top-rated Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. In 2009 he was drafted in as interim chairman at the scandal-hit Mid Staffordshire trust.