The head of an important health body won’t attend board meetings of the trust which runs Worcestershire Royal Hospital because of its new chairman.

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust’s recently appointed head is Sir David Nicholson, who stepped down as the chief executive of NHS England five years ago after the publication of the Francis report into serious mismanagement at Stafford Hospital.

He had been chief executive of the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority for some of the time the report covered.

Now county councillor Paul Tuthill, who is chairman of Worcestershire’s Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee, has said he won’t attend meetings of the trust’s board.

He said: “I have been nominated to go to the Trust’s board meetings although I haven’t managed to because of clashes with other meetings.

“But, speaking in a personal capacity, I feel I can’t attend the meetings.

"I have a great deal of empathy for the people of Staffordshire and what they went through. There are reports of hundreds of people dying.”

“I feel very strongly about that. It would not be appropriate for me to go to the meetings.”

Sir David Nicholson was appointed last month to the part-time job, reportedly paid £40,000, by NHS Improvement.

At the time that body’s chief executive Ian Dalton said Sir David’s experience, both nationally and locally in NHS management, made him ideal for the job.

A disputed estimate suggests between 400 and 1,200 patients died as a result of poor care at Stafford Hospital between January 2005 and March 2009.

In 2005 and 2006 Sir David Nicholson was in charge of the regional health authority overseeing the Mid-Staffordshire Hospitals Trust that ran Stafford Hospital.