Betsi Cadwaladr: Major change forecast for health board

A former NHS boss expects "pretty major changes" in the leadership team of north Wales' troubled health board.

Prof Marcus Longley said he believed fresh faces at the top of Betsi Cadwaladr's executive team would give the health board a chance "to reset".

Health Minister Eluned Morgan has said she read the "riot act" to executives but didn't have the power to sack them.

She has just placed the health board back under direct Welsh government control.

The organisation spent 1,996 days under direct government oversight after being placed in special measures in 2015.

Last week, a damning report from the public spending watchdog found Betsi Cadwaladr's leadership to be dysfunctional.

The health board manages the region's NHS care and is led by a board of executive directors and independent members, with the report finding "clear and deep-seated fractures within the executive team that are preventing that team from working effectively".

The 11 independent board members quit on Monday, having been asked to do so by the health minister, saying they had "no confidence" in the Welsh government's grasp of the situation.

Following criticism from opposition parties that she had targeted the wrong board members, Ms Morgan said she was unable to sack the executive team.

Prof Longley told Sunday's BBC Politics Wales that he expected further changes and "would be surprised if there weren't some pretty major changes of personnel, at least".

"We've reached a situation... where, in effect, the board is going to turn over and become a whole new set of people. It looks like that's the situation," said Prof Longley, former chairman of Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board.

"Now, it's absolutely critical that those new 20-odd people around the board table establish functional working relationships.

"If the new set of people start falling out and behaving as some of the others have then we're going to be back where we are now again.

"So here is an opportunity at least to reset and get it right this time round," Prof Longley added.

Gareth Davies, Conservative Senedd member for the Vale of Clwyd, told Politics Wales his constituents "have had enough of an under-performing health board for the best part of 10 years".

"We need to see real tangible improvements to their performance at the health board," he said.

"If the Welsh government and the health minister can't deliver on their objectives then the health minister needs to consider her position and whether she's fit to do the job."

Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Jane Dodds told the programme she would be "really worried" if she was one of the newly appointed independent board members.

"How can we be confident that the new independent board members are not going to feel that they're actually going to be asked to resign or sacked if they raise concerns?" said the Mid and West Wales Member of the Senedd (MS).

Plaid Cymru has called on the first minister to sack Ms Morgan as health minister.

Party leader Adam Price told BBC Radio Wales' Sunday Supplement: "We've got some pretty chronic problems in the NHS, an accentuated crisis that has come to a very dramatic head in Betsi Cadwaladr but that is just one latest example of an NHS in Wales which is in crisis.

"We've heard nothing, nothing from the minister that could convince us or, frankly, anyone else that she has the answers to the problems in Betsi Cadwaladr or the problems in the NHS as a whole and that's why we need new ideas and new leadership."

Responding to the calls for Ms Morgan to be sacked, Welsh Labour said: "This is pretty desperate stuff from Plaid Cymru. The health minister is doing an excellent job."

The health board's interim chief executive Gill Davies previously said it was "extremely disappointing" that it was going into special measures, but acknowledged that "more needs to be done at a greater pace to regain the confidence of our staff and our communities".

Betsi Cadwaladr is Wales' biggest health board in terms of population, covering more than 700,000 people across the north of the country.