NHS managers are shunning the top jobs in the health service because they fear being vilified and blamed for hospital deficits and closures, The Times has learnt.

Young directors are reluctant to become chief executives of NHS trusts because of the way that senior leaders are treated, according to the NHS Confederation, which represents 93 per cent of health service organisations.

Gill Morgan, head of the confederation, told The Times that the health service was enduring a "crisis of confidence" among its senior bosses amid the Government’s drive to reconfigure local services and cut costs.

Despite salaries of up to £150,000, the CEOs of the most troubled hospital trusts spent an average of 22 months in the job, often resigning because of public persecution and political pressure, she said.

"We’re finding it very difficult finding people who want to be chief execs," she said.

"Young managers see how their seniors are treated by the system, they see the newspaper headlines when something goes wrong in an otherwise well-run hospital and the baying for blood that goes on, and they’re saying, ‘I’ll stay as a director, thank you very much. I don’t need this’. That’s a catastrophe for the people of this country, for huge numbers of NHS employees and patients."

A fifth of trust CEOs left their jobs last year, leaving a number of senior vacancies open for months at a time. This turnover of NHS chief executives is 5 per cent higher than in the private sector, where the salaries for equivalent roles are often four times higher.

Dr Morgan, herself a former chief executive of North and East Devon Health Authority, said that NHS managers in general were being unfairly blamed for the Government’s reconfiguration of the health service.

"I can tell you about managers who have had their children abused at school, who have had urine and faeces put through the door and effigies of themselves burnt, while they are trying to talk about the case for reconfiguration," she said.

"Why would a young director or doctor with a family take that sort of pressure on?"

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