THE chief executive of the organisation running Worcestershire’s three major hospitals has resigned, your Worcester News can exclusively reveal.

Penny Venables has been on sick leave from Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Worcestershire Royal Hospital, Kidderminster Hospital and Redditch’s Alexandra Hospital, since April and today it has been announced she has handed in her resignation.

The trust’s chairman Harry Turner said Mrs Venables was required to work six months notice and would officially leave the job in January next year.

“The terms of her resignation are completely contractual,” he said. “There’s no special payments or anything like that.”

In the meantime Chris Tidman, who has been filling the role of acting chief executive since Mrs Venables was signed off, has been designated interim chief executive.

Mr Turner said he was not planning on recruiting a permanent replacement for Mrs Venables until a report following a full inspection of the three sites by Chief Inspector of Hospitals Professor Sir Mike Richards was published, expected to be in September or October, and the future of the long-running project reconfiguring care at the three hospitals was clearer.

“Chris has done a good job as acting chief executive,” he said. “I’m not going to look for an immediate replacement until there’s clarity with the chief inspector’s report and the reconfiguration project.

“I want to make sure the person we get is right for the job.

“In the meantime we’ve got a strong leadership team in place,” he said. “We had a good chief inspector visit and I’m confident we can work forward from here.”

The trust has been under serious pressure since last winter, with extremely high levels of patients leading to hundreds of cancelled operations and lengthening waiting times, as well as an ever-deepening financial deficit.