Member of 'Yorkshiregate' board to chair supertrust

The appointment of Bill Kilgallon, currently chair of Leeds Community and Mental Health Services Teaching trust, has renewed speculation about who will get the chief executive's job at what will be the UK's largest teaching trust.

Mr Kilgallon, was seen as a front-runner for the top post at the new combined Leeds Teaching Hospitals trust at an early stage. It is understood his appointment was backed by all five Leeds MPs.

The 51-year-old chief executive of a housing association is a former lord mayor of Leeds and was a Leeds Labour councillor from 1979 to 1992, although he is no longer politically active.

Mr Kilgallon said the merger of St James' and Seacroft University Hospital trust and United Leeds Teaching Hospitals trust presented a 'huge challenge and opportunity for the city of Leeds to improve its services'.

'I am happy to make a contribution to that,' he added.

Mr Kilgallon was a non-executive director of the former Yorkshire RHA from the late 1980s until October 1992.

The board of the former RHA collectively criticised by the Commons public accounts committee in a notorious report into management failures at the authority between 1991 and 1994, a scandal dubbed 'Yorkshiregate'.

It found that the then RHA chair, Sir Bryan Askew, had failed to 'monitor the actions of senior managers'. RHA non-executives from that period were also criticised, but not named.

After the report's publication in April 1997, Mr Kilgallon told the Journal he was not a member of the RHA land panel which was partly blamed for a pounds3m land sales loss, nor did he participate in hospitality events paid for by the RHA, which were also criticised in the report.

Asked at the time whether he should bear any responsibility for the RHA's misfortunes, he said he could not comment until he had read the report.

Last week he told the Journal: 'Most of the incidents covered in the report happened after I left.' Commenting on the issue of lavish expenses, he said he was neither aware of them at the time nor in receipt of them. 'During that period in the NHS there was encouragement for managers to get on with the job. The pendulum has swung back, I think rightly, where we have much more regard for a proper process.'

Mr Kilgallon said he expected the non-executives for the new trust to be announced, shortly after which the search for a chief executive will begin.

Insiders believe St James' chief executive David Johnson is now the front- runner for the job. Leeds HA chief executive Ron De Witt was also tipped for the post but reportedly does not see 'eye to eye' with Mr Kilgallon.