Ambulance bosses have made their second assistant chief appointment in seven months in a bid to turn around the fortunes of the under-performing East of England NHS trust.

Daniel Gore, who has a background working for the West Midlands Ambulance Service and Essex Ambulance Service, has been working as assistant chief ambulance officer and transformation director at the East of England Ambulance Service Trust (EEAST) for the last two months, it has emerged.

His appointment, which officials said was done under an open recruitment process, comes after Paul Leaman was handed the temporary role of assistant chief executive of the region's ambulance service at the start of the year. Officials from EEAST yesterday said that the two senior ambulance managers were performing very different roles and that Mr Leaman was set to take retirement this autumn.

A spokesman for the ambulance trust said Mr Gore's appointment followed an internal and external competitive recruitment process, which was decided by a panel involving Anthony Marsh, chief executive of both EEAST and the West Midlands Ambulance Service, EEAST's chairman, HR manager and an external assessor.

The spokesman added: 'Dan Gore's role is to work alongside the locality directors to help improve the trust's response to patients and our performance. His initial focus is on reviewing how the control rooms operate and how processes can be improved to provide a better response to patients.'

'Dan Gore's role is around improving operational performance and Paul Leaman's role is leading and coordinating the reduction of manager, back office and admin posts which so far has saved circa £8m. We are on target to reduce by £10m by the time Paul retires in October.'

Mr Gore's Linked In profile says he was A&E operational service delivery director and assistant chief officer at the West Midlands Ambulance Service between October 2012 and May 2013.

He was director of operational service delivery at the same NHS trust between 2007 and 2010 and worked at Essex Ambulance Service between 1989 and 2006.

Questions were raised about the appointment of Mr Leaman as assistant chief executive of EEAST after it emerged there had been no open recruitment process. He was served with a 12 month suspension order by the Health and Care Professions Council in 2009 after it emerged that he had taken an ambulance vehicle on a 'booze cruise' to France.

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