Health board's chief executive suspended

The BBC is reporting today that the chief executive of a Besti Cadwaladr University Health Board, which was yesterday placed into special measures by the Welsh Government, has been suspended with immediate effect.

 

Betsi Cadwaladr chairman Peter Higson said the suspension of Prof Trevor Purt was a "neutral act" while arrangements for special measures were sorted out.

For the full story see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-33061869

Meanwhile, Llangollen campaigner Martin Crumpton, who opposed the health board's decision to close the town's Cottage Hospital, said in a statement: "Suspending the Chief Executive Officer, Trevor Purt, was inevitable and a necessarily step in allowing special measures to be taken, and far-reaching as it goes well-beyond Glan Clwyd, Bangor and Wrexham Maelor.

"It will clearly hearten campaigners at Withybush who were also made promises to reopen their own doctor-led maternity services.

 

"Professor Higson was in an invidious position, caught between his obligation to so-called collective responsibility and his own judgement of what is right, just and in the best interests of the hundreds of thousands to whose care he’d been entrusted.

 

"The very least I can do is reaffirm support from myself and other campaigners I work closely with for his programme of desperately-needed reforms."