HEALTH trust bosses were branded "arrogant" for failing to turn up to a meeting focusing on their decision to close a top fertility clinic.

North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust were summoned by councillors to a meeting at Hartlepool's Civic Centre to explain why they are planning to close the Hartlepool clinic from the end of March.

They claim the failure to recruit enough embryologists means the clinic cannot operate safely.

But trust bosses declined to attend today's (Friday, February 5) meeting - a move branded "a disgrace" by councillors, some of whom called for their resignations.

The Royal College of Nursing also expressed its disappointment that the trust had failed to attend.

Councillor Ray Martin-Wells, chair of the audit committee, said: “Everyone in this chamber has given up their time this afternoon to come together to discuss a hugely important issue and for the Hospital Trust bosses to turn their backs on the very people they are employed to serve is a massive slap in the face, wholly inexcusable and astonishing."

The reason given for their absence was that they were unhappy a former employee, fertility expert Dr Mohammed Menabawey, who helped to establish the original clinic in Hartlepool, had been invited to give evidence.

Hartlepool MP Iain Wright, and the councillors on the audit and governance committee at Hartlepool Borough Council, have now asked health watchdog Monitor to look into the clinic closure decision - and to other cutbacks at Hartlepool's hospital.

He said the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) had said there were no embryologist recruitment problems in the North-East and that other health trusts had offered to help the clinic stay open.

"I think there has been a deliberate and surreptitious determination to close the unit regardless of what was put in place," he said.

"The trust should be operating a two hospital model and at the moment there is no other conclusion that by hook or by crook they want to close services in Hartlepool."

A spokesperson for North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust told The Northern Echo: “The trust advised the council that they were not following a proper and due process by calling a clinician who is not an appropriate member of the clinical senate, qualified to give independent clinical advice to the council.”

A spokesman for the Royal College of Nursing said in the three months to December, the trust made "no effort at all" to recruit to the fertility unit and called on them to have a full public consultation.