UNIONS have condemned Dorset County Hospital for splashing out such ‘staggering’ amounts of money on Mr Smith and his interim team of directors.

Simon Newell, Unison South West Regional Head of Health, said: “Staff at the hospital will be shocked to learn of this continuing saga – it is absolutely outrageous.

“The idea that you pay a manager a staggering £139,000 for just 44 days’ work, which works out around £3,159 a day, and that’s excluding expenses, when the hospital is desperate to save money is ludicrous.

“This has gone up from what was calculated less than a year ago at £2,557 a day – that’s nearly a 25 per cent increase when health staff have had their pay frozen, are having their pensions attacked and when attempts are being made to stop incremental increases and even proper payment for the Royal Wedding Bank Holiday in some areas.

“To then claim his expenses as well Mr Smith is adding insult to injury.

“Unison believes that this money should have been spent on patient care or used to cut the deficit the hospital is in.”

Mr Newell said seeing the amounts Mr Smith was paid would be ‘galling’ for nurses working at Dorset County Hospital.

He said: “Most nurses earn around £1,800 a month after tax and to see someone earning hundreds of pounds more than that for just one day will be galling.“I can’t see how anyone can justify this use of taxpayers’ money.”

Mr Newell calculated that Mr Smith’s rate of pay meant he was worth more than 73 full time cleaners, 40 staff nurses or 10 of the most senior non-medical staff in the NHS.

He said: “Spending this much on one role is bound to impact on patient care.

“We now realise why the hospital has been in financial difficulty for some time.

“Being top heavy in management costs has a direct correlation in relation to any hospital’s ability to fund front line care.

“It’s absolutely immoral for an organisation to think that that’s reasonable.”

Royal College of Nursing officer Helen Hancox said the ‘huge sums’ paid to Derek Smith were particularly worrying in the light of a recent dispute when the hospital proposed withholding increments to nurses salaries, although the hospital eventually backed down.

She said: “What is of particular concern to RCN members now is that Dorset County Hospital has been attempting to withhold nurses’ contractual right to salaries but at the same time paying such huge sums of money to an individual who has not resolved the trust’s financial problems.”