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The Chief Minister is expected to face a grilling tomorrow over whether two senior Health officials whose imminent departures were announced last week will receive pay-offs for leaving their roles.
After failing to respond to questions from Bailiwick Express and the JEP for more than a week, the government confirmed on Thursday that both Director General Caroline Landon and Chief Nurse Rose Naylor – two of the most senior civil servants within the health service – are to step down from their roles by 31 March.
The government said that both had informed the Health Minister of their intention to leave.
Their departures came after a tumultuous few years for the department, which has been hit with a series of damning reviews about the way it is run and the culture that persists there.
The government has since declined to provide any further detail on the circumstances, reasoning or negotiations surrounding the sudden departures, saying that it will not be commenting until interim arrangements are confirmed.
It's expected, however, that Chief Minister Deputy Kristina Moore - in her capacity as Chair of the States Employment Board - will face a raft of questions on the matter during tomorrow's States Assembly meeting.
Among those looking to probe further into what happened is Deputy Lyndsay Feltham, who chairs the Public Accounts Committee.
She said she was keen to get clarity on the future governance of the Health Department and whether Ms Landon and Ms Naylor received pay-offs for leaving their roles.
Deputy Feltham said that she also had a number of outstanding queries relating to the departure of former Chief Operating Officer John Quinn - who was responsible for the £100m savings programme and the government IT systems overhaul - in January, including whether he received a pay-off.
She continued: "One of the streams of work we were planning anyway was putting the terms of reference together for a review of governance in Health and Social Care.
"We will be looking at health governance as a formal review – that was already planned and is unrelated to this [the departures of Ms Landon and Ms Naylor] but will obviously pick up on some of the issues.
"What I would be concerned about is what the next steps are to ensure good governance is in place within Health."
The government has said it will be making no further comment on the departures of Ms Landon and Ms Naylor until interim arrangements had been established for their replacements.
When the departure of Chief Executive Charlie Parker was announced in late 2020, the government repeatedly refused to reveal whether there had been any exit payment - it wasn't until May 2021, when the States Annual Report and Accounts were published, that the figure of £500,000 in January 2021 was officially confirmed.
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