CRISIS hit Kennet and North Wiltshire Primary Care Trust is to be run by a part-time boss, the Gazette has learned.

The trust, which is proposing to close maternity units in Devizes and Malmesbury, and has already closed beds at both Devizes and Malmesbury hospitals as part of plans to save £10 million over the next three years, has been without a permanent chief executive since Barbara Smith resigned in September.

Now the job is to go to someone who is already in a similar post at another health trust who will have to juggle the demands of the Kennet and North Wiltshire trust at the same time.

Paula Winchcombe, Devizes Mayor and chairman of DASH2, the action group set up to save services at Devizes Hospital, said: "Having a part-time chief executive at the trust shows an appalling disregard for feeling among people in the community who are fighting to save hospital services."

"It is another indication of their penny pinching attitude."

The trust, which received a zero rating in national performance ratings in July, is currently being run on a job share basis by Stephen Golledge and Mike Theelke, both senior directors of West Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust.

They are due to leave on December 31 and the board of the Kennet and North Wiltshire PCT together with the Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire Strategic Health Authority, have decided to offer the job of chief executive to another chief executive in the region.

Nine PCTs have been invited to apply.