This classic piece of management-speak was delivered in March 2001, when Miss Gibb was implicated in the first of a string of hygiene scandals at three separate NHS trusts.

The Daily Telegraph and Health Direct has learned that Miss Gibb, who rose to the £150,000-a-year post of chief executive of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust before she left the job last week, has an unenviable track record of presiding over dirty hospitals where infections have been able to spread.

Despite this, Miss Gibb has been richly rewarded by the NHS, which may yet give her £250,000 in severance pay if the Health Secretary’s attempt to block it is ruled illegal.

Miss Gibb, a former nurse with one grown-up daughter, refused to talk to the media yesterday at her £700,000 home in a secluded country lane in the village of Sole Street, near Cobham, Kent.

Her partner, Mark Rees, who was chief executive of Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Trust until Oct 1, told reporters: “No way is she going to talk to you. Why should she? If you want to ask questions why don’t you go to the trust – it’s got nothing to do with her.”

Miss Gibb worked her way up through the ranks as a nurse before becoming operations director at Bromley Hospitals NHS Trust, where she was in charge of hygiene.

In March 2001 an internal survey at the hospital found that the standards of cleanliness were “poor”. It was then that Miss Gibb was quoted as saying the trust had introduced an “action plan”.

Later that year she became chief executive of North Middlesex Hospital, which was named in 2001 as the worst in the country for MRSA.

In Oct 2001, shortly after the inquiry into the murder of Victoria Climbie began, Miss Gibb was one of six signatories to a letter in which she and others agreed with Haringey council to take a “joint and positive approach” to the inquiry, not attacking or blaming each other for failing to spot the abuse which eight year old Victoria was suffering when she was taken to hospital for treatment.

Miss Gibb moved on to her job as chief executive of the Kent trust in 2003, where she immediately pledged to sort out dirty wards. Yet the conditions remained so bad that Clostridium difficile became rampant, killing between 90 and 350 patients.

Years of broken promises

“The (Kent and Sussex) hospital has got cleaning problems, I’ve been aware of those for the last six months. I’ve put a massive amount of improvements into them, and I’m going to continue to put improvements into the hospital until we get it to the level we want it to be. It will take nine months.”

Rose Gibb, chief executive, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, June 2004

“This issue is receiving my full and personal attention.”

Rose Gibb, June 2004

“We have set down a new culture of what we expect from the cleaning staff.”

Rose Gibb, Sept 2004, at the trust’s annual meeting

“If we find anything can be further improved it will be a top priority.”

Bernard Place, then director of nursing for the trust, July 2006

“The trust takes the care and safety of its patients extremely seriously. The trust will now… identify, develop and implement any additional measures that can be made to further improve patient care and safety.”

Rose Gibb, Sept 2006

“Kent and Sussex Hospital has taken a range of additional infection control measures which include ward closures, additional ward cleaning and isolation of patients in side rooms.”

Trust spokesman, Feb 2007

From:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/12/nbugs212.xml

Health Direct has long noted labour’s policy of rewarding NHS failures. On July 20, 2007 Health Direct posted: NHS manager’s payout is nearly £1m

When an NHS manager has been given a redundancy package worth almost £1 million in what was described as “a lottery win rather than a payout”.

David Johnson, the former head of a regional strategic health authority, was one of about 70 staff who left the organisation when it was abolished as part of a restructuring programme.

The 50-year-old received a package worth £899,810 including salary and pension arrangements. The reorganisation was supposed to save £250 million a year in administration costs. However, the NHS is thought to have spent at least £320 million on redundancy packages to those who have lost their jobs.

Health direct then asked- given the current climate of tony’s cronies- Health Direct asks if there any relationship between David Johnson the NHS lottery winner and Alan Johnson the NHS boss?

Health direct also posted on August 24, 2007 Labour red tape shake up costs NHS 140 million Pounds as the reorganisation of strategic health authorities (SHAs) in England has seen the NHS pay out more than £80m in redundancy costs, Health Direct and the BBC has learned.

More than 700 staff lost their jobs in last year’s shake-up, which saw the number of SHAs reduced from 28 to 10. The cost of the average redundancy package for senior managers was more than £350,000.