City mental health chief to retire after six years

THE chief executive of the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust has announced his retirement after six years for ‘personal reasons’.

John Short said it had been a privilege to work at the trust, but he had made the decision to spend more time “running, cycling and with my family”.

The trust, which serves a population of 1.3 million people across Birmingham and Solihull, will now be advertising for a replacement before Mr Short leaves in March 2019.

In a letter to staff he said: “My intention in working in mental health services has always been to make a difference for the better and improve the services that we offer to people overwhelmed by their poor mental health.

“I was involved in the closure of four of the old ‘Water Tower’ hospitals and in the development of a wide range of services, including the National Service Framework in 1999 and the first street triage service in Leicester in 2012.

“On the much sadder side, I have worked with a large number of service users, and sometimes colleagues, who have found their mental distress too overwhelming and have taken their own lives and I will leave my post knowing that my successor and the NHS still has much to do. My decision to retire is a purely personal one and, after a period of concentrating on my running and cycling, travelling and my family, I may well return to working as a volunteer where my career started.

“I would like to thank all the staff at the Trust for making this such a challenging and great place to work and you will see no let-up in my ambition or energy levels over the next eight months before I leave the Trust.”

Mr Short, 57, started his working life in mental health services as a volunteer at a night shelter in Edinburgh in 1981 and later work for the Probation Service.

Over the past eight years he has been a chief executive, first in Leicestershire and then in Birmingham and Solihull, and he was named in the HSJ’s list of top 50 NHS chief executive’s earlier this year.