Update from Anthony Marsh - 31st July 2014

Yesterday we held our annual public meeting in Ipswich, which was our opportunity to showcase the good work of the staff and volunteers to the public, stakeholders and the media. We talked about our quality account and clinical priorities, the annual accounts and our progress against our six priorities.

I spoke about the excellent progress we have already made and our plans for the future. I talked about how we have improved the Trust since January, including the new and replacement ambulances and the new replacement response cars we have on the road, our student paramedic programme where we are starting to see significant numbers of new staff starting to work on ambulances and the career progression pathways for our emergency care assistants and technicians. I also discussed the performance trajectory plan and our targets for recruiting more operational staff, as I shared with you last week. All of the work we are doing received very good feedback and I was pleased and proud to tell people about how our staff are turning this organisation around.

One of the other parts of my presentation was on the money we will have saved by this financial year end through management and administrative savings. Through removing interim posts, agency workers, voluntary redundancies, posts removed in the restructure and leavers we have not replaced, we are due to save more than nine million pounds (full year effect). This is a huge sum that will go directly into strengthening our frontline and improving our service to patients.

I also promise to continue providing visible and engaged management, who will communicate, listen to and support our staff. I want to make your working lives better and am determined to put the pride back into working for EEAST.