A NURSING union has criticised soaring chief executive pay after research showed that some of the highest paid NHS bosses in the country are in the North-East.

Jake Turnbull, North-East regional spokesman for the Royal College of Nursing, said while the average salary of an NHS chief executive in England was around £173,000 significant numbers of North-East chiefs earn substantially more.

“Indeed, some of the highest paid NHS chief executives in the country are actually based in the North-East,” said Mr Turnbull.

“While I fully appreciate that you have to pay the going rate to attract high quality talent, the reality is that chief executive pay has gone up significantly, while at the same time front-line nurses have experienced multi-year pay freezes.”

Mr Turnbull said several North-East chief executives were now paid close to a quarter of a million pounds.

“If you are a band nurse on under £22,000 a year struggling to cope with making ends meet while providing excellent levels of care in an over-stretched NHS this does not make easy reading,” he added.

The RCN official said at the same time as paying some of the highest salaries in the country North-East trusts are struggling with understaffed wards, long waits in A&E and growing waiting lists.

“We have also got trusts in the region who are having to make unprecedented cost savings because they are running multi-million pound deficits.”

Mr Turnbull said RCN research showed that the North-East has five chief executives in the top 22 in terms of salaries – out of a total of 171 trusts listed.

“The average across the North-East is around £206,000 which is pretty much 20 per cent over the national average for chief executive pay in the NHS,” he added.

According to RCN research into salary levels during 2013-14 the top earning chief executive in the North-East was Sir Leonard Fenwick, chief executive of the Newcastle Hospitals Trust, who was on £245,000 to £250,000.

In joint second place was Jim Mackey, chief executive of Northumbria Healthcare and Alan Foster, chief executive of the North Tees and Hartlepool Trust who were both on between £230,000 and £235,000.

Professor Tricia Hart, chief executive of the South Tees Hospitals Trust was joint third along with Ken Bremner, chief executive of the City Hospitals Sunderland Trust.

Kingsley Smith, chairman of the Newcastle Hospitals Trust said: “That salary reflects the fact that this trust is one of the biggest in the country. We have a £1bn turn-over, 14,000 staff and we treated 1.6m patients last year.”

A spokeswoman for QE Gateshead said “it is important that those with ultimate accountability are remunerated appropriately so that we can retain the very best healthcare leaders.”