A NEW chief has been appointed to take the helm of a new NHS trust.

Chris Burdon has been made chairman of the proposed new Worcestershire Community and Mental Health Service NHS Trust.

Mr Burdon said: “It will be an exciting challenge to shape and develop the new organisation that will provide community and mental health services across the county. We are going to need to make sure that we focus on doing everything possible to further improve services for our patients through an increased focus on quality and efficiency.”

The trust will manage both mental health services such as Newtown Hospital in Worcester and community health services, including the council’s five community hospitals in Malvern, Evesham, Pershore, Tenbury and Bromsgrove.

This trust will be established over the next few months as a result of a decision taken by NHS Worcestershire, which holds the purse strings for county healthcare, in September last year. Worcestershire Mental Health Partnership Trust also took a decision to seek dissolution in November last year and their services will be managed by the new trust.

NHS Worcestershire’s provider arm, which ran community hospitals and other services, will also be scrapped and the new trust will take over the services once run by this organisation.

NHS Worcestershire will continue to manage the cash for county health care until GP consortia take over as part of reforms imposed by the Government.

Mr Burdon has been a non-executive director of NHS Worcestershire since December 2008 and has held the position of chairman of the provider services board of NHS Worcestershire for the past 18 months.

His four-year term will run between Friday, April 1, 2011, and March 31, 2015 and will receive an allowance of £20,896 per year.