Ambulance boss gets £121k handshake (From This Is Wiltshire)

Ambulance boss gets £121k handshake

4:10pm Friday 3rd February 2012 in Latest News

A SENIOR manager at Great Western Ambulance Service has left the organisation with a £121,000 pay-off.

The unnamed individual’s post was no longer required and the trust decided to offer a severance payment.

A spokesman for GWAS said the manager concerned had been on a variety of secondments for the past three years and during that time the salary was paid for by the host organisations.

The spokesman said the payment reflected the individual’s length of service.

The payment led to an overspend in the budget up to the end of December at GWAS’s headquarters at Jenner House, Chippenham.

At a board meeting of GWAS last week the board was told GWAS was £325,000 behind its target of ending the financial year with a surplus of £1.4 million.

To control costs the organisation has imposed a recruitment freeze at its head- quarters while planned agency and overtime use is approved by senior executives and all expenditure above £1,000 has to be authorised by the director of finance.