Chief Exec who presided over closure of Llangollen Hospital and downgrading of Wrexham SCBU gets £200k payout
Health campaigners have reacted with fury at news that senior health bosses at Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board were awarded hundreds of thousands of pounds in payouts and pay increases last year. It was revealed that former health Boss mary Burrows was given a £200,000 pay off, pocketing just under £1/2m last year; while the acting Chief Executive was given a …close to 20% payrise, increasing his pay packet to £165,000. The Board’s 21 directors received more than £2m.
Mabon ap Gwynfor of the Keep Llangollen Health Services campaign group branded the payments immoral and vulgar and an insult to patients who were being denied treatment because of a lack of funds.
Mabon ap Gwynfor said: “The former Chief Executive was paid a little under half-a-million pounds between her salary and payout. This person presided over the closure of our community hospital in Llangollen and the downgrading of our Special Care Baby Unit at Wrexham Maelor. What’s worse is that these payments were signed off by the Health Minister in the Welsh Government.
“Health workers have been given a below inflation 1% pay rise, effectively a real terms pay cut, and are constantly asked to do more for less. Health services are being centralised as a means of cutting costs. Some patients are being denied specialist drugs because of a lack of funds. All of the people affected by these decisions will wonder how the Health Board can afford to give payouts or pay increases of hundreds of thousands of pounds when they’ve been denied certain services based on costs.”
Keep Llangollen Health Services and people in the Dee Valley continue to call for hospital beds to be re-instated at the new health centre which is being built in Llangollen.
Mabon ap Gwynfor 