Hospital chief accused of shutting down Lucy Letby concerns takes £1.5m pension from NHS

A hospital boss facing mounting scrutiny over claims he shut down warnings about baby killer Lucy Letby has walked away from the NHS with a £1.5m pension. Tony Chambers bought a £550,000 Grade II-listed home in Bolton with his wife in 2017.

The following year, he walked away from the Countess of Chester Hospital, in the wake of Letby's arrest. Mr Chambers had been CEO at the Countess, where he earned up to £160,000 a year, the Mirror reports.

He greeted Queen Camilla, then the Duchess of Cornwall, during a royal visit to the Countess in 2014. Mr Chambers, 57, had more than £1m in his pension fund when he left the countess, before taking up a series of other highly paid posts in the NHS.

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He left the health service in June this year. Accounts show his retirement pot had reached £1.5m when he stepped down from his last post as interim chief of the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, Surrey.

A grandfather, Mr Chambers has described himself as 'a wannabe ski god' and a keen dog walker. In 2020 he said of the NHS: “We have a privileged role as care providers because we are there for people when they are at their most vulnerable, as well as when they are most elated, like when a new baby is born.”

Mr Chambers’ riches emerged as scrutiny mounted yesterday over his handling of Letby - and as whistleblowers claimed lives could have been saved if the Countess of Chester had called police earlier. Letby, 33, was convicted on Friday at Manchester Crown Court.

She was found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six more from June 2015 to June 2016. Her mother Susan was led sobbing from court by husband John.

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