SALISBURY MP Robert Key has called on the chairmen of South Wiltshire primary care trust and the Avon and Wiltshire mental health partnership to "consider their positions" in the face of proposed cuts to mental health services in Salisbury.

Mr Key said it appeared that the new £17m buildings at Fountain Way, in Wilton Road, should not have been commissioned and that the mental health trust should have known that "bad policy was being driven through in south Wiltshire at excessive cost".

Mr Key said primary care trust chairman Victor Prior and Christine Reid, chairman of the mental health partnership, should consider their positions as they "must be held accountable when things go badly wrong".

He said: "The primary care trust just went on paying for a service that was doomed because it was not in line with national best practice."

Mr Key made his comments this week after meeting Trevor Jones, chief executive of the Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire strategic health authority.

Mr Key told the Journal: "If we are to trust the people who are appointed and paid to administer our local health service, then they must be held accountable when things go badly wrong. That was supposed to be the point of the trusts.

"A new acting primary care trust chief executive has been brought in, but the web of trust board members remains gloriously intact. What are they for?

"They have now been told they got it badly wrong, in both policy and finance, over several years."

Mr Key said he had taken up this issue with government ministers who had "passed the buck firmly to the local primary care trust and mental health trusts".

He said: "It is the most vulnerable patients in our community who have taken the hit."

Mr Key said a plan for future mental health services is now out for consultation and he urged local people to get behind it.

"We really do need a fresh approach to the care of those with mental health problems.

"I argue that the sudden-death cuts all in one year are too harsh and should be phased over at least two."

Mr Key said he had urged Mr Jones to acknowledge the work of the "excellent mental health service staff" who have operated under great strains.