CLAIMS by a national newspaper that a North-East hospital chief executive was given a pay package of £1.26m - the highest claimed by an NHS boss last year – have been strongly rejected by trust officials.

As part of a wide-ranging article highlighting what the Daily Mail described as the “greed of the NHS fat cats” the newspaper claimed that Professor Tricia Hart, chief executive of the 1,200-bed South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust had the highest pay package of any NHS hospital boss in the Health Service.

But in a strongly worded rebuttal by the trust chairman Deborah Jenkins - sent to the Middlesbrough-based trust’s staff – the trust said they would be pressing for the Daily Mail to print “a full and prominent retraction and apology” for the story.

The Daily Mail claimed that Prof Hart “earned £1,26m last year while her failing trust declared a financial deficit of £4.4m and was investigated over deeply concerning death and infection rates. “ The Daily Mail also claimed that Prof Hart “was awarded a £35,000 rise, increasing her salary to £220,000.”

But the trust denied this was true.

In the statement to staff the South Tees Trust said: “Tricia did not have an additional £1m added to her pension pot in 2013-14 and she does not have a total pension of £2.93m. Tricia’s pension entitlement is detailed publicly in our annual report but the way we are required to report pension benefits for executive directors has changed in recent years.

“In 2012-13 our annual report detailed the total pension pot for Tricia as £1.304m in cash equivalent transfer value. In our 2013-14 report this was reported as pension related benefit in a band of £1.0375 - £1,040m. The Daily Mail incorrectly interpreted this as a £1m a year increase in pension and appear to have added the two figures together to come up with the total pension.”

The trust briefing said Prof Hart will not get a “further windfall” next year of “a tax free £330,000 lump sum” – as alleged by the Daily Mail – but she will be entitled to take a tax free payment of part of her retirement benefit in the same way as any member of the NHS pension scheme when she retires.

The trust said when they were looking for a new chief executive in 2012 a national recruitment company advised them that they needed to increase the salary band to attract the best candidates and the directors decided to increase the salary band from £205,000-£210,000 to £220,000-£225,000.

“But even with this change, the salary was still considerably less than that paid by many similar sized trusts,” the briefing added.

The trust told staff it did not have “worryingly high death rates” and an investigation by the external regulator, Monitor, into financial and quality issues in 2013, decided that no action was needed.

The trust also pointed out that a predicted deficit of £29m made at the start of 2014-15 was reduced – under Prof Hart’s leadership – to a deficit at the end of the year of £7.1m, described by the trust as “an impressive performance.”

Prof Hart was appointed deputy chief executive at South Tees in 2009 and was made acting chief executive in September 2012. She applied for the post of chief executive alongside other candidates from inside and outside the NHS and was appointed chief executive in December 2012.