Eye-popping pensions of shamed NHS bosses

BOSSES at an under-fire NHS mental health trust have benefited from huge rises to their pension pots – while making sharp staff cuts.

Since 2014 executive directors at Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, criticised for failing to investigate hundreds of patients’ deaths, have seen their pensions grow by up to £300,000 in a single year.

And the salaries of some board members have jumped by tens of thousands of pounds. At least three of the board – chief executive Katrina Percy, 42, chief operating officer Dr Chris Gordon, 55, and medical director Dr Lesley Stevens, 52 – now earn more than the Prime Minister’s £143,000 salary. But it is their pensions that will make eyes pop.

Last December Southern Health, which runs mental health services across Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, was criticised in an independent report for failing to investigate hundreds of deaths of patients from 2011 to 2015.

Among patients with learning difficulties who died unexpectedly, just one per cent were investigated. The report concluded a ‘failing of leadership’ was to blame.

Overall the total pay bill – excluding payments into pensions – of Southern’s executive directors rose from £1.1 million in 2013/14 to £1.6 million in 2015/16, a leap of almost 50 per cent. Yet between 2014/15 and 2015/16 the number of staff has been cut by 11 per cent, from 7,282 to 6,468. That includes a 30 per cent cut in nurses, midwives and health visitors.

Last night Dr Sara Ryan, whose son Connor Sparrowhawk, 18, drowned in a bath in 2013 following an epileptic seizure at a residential unit run by Southern, said: ‘It is an obscene increase [to executive pay] in an underfunded NHS, made even more so by the fact the board continues to fail.’

Southern Health said managers were paid according to national guidelines and the remuneration was comparable with other trusts.