SO the NHS gravy train for the bosses at Burnley's hospitals comes to a halt.

Out go the "performance" bonuses that added thousands of pounds to the pay of trust executives. And unable to be repeated is the kind of golden "goodbye" deal that saw axed chief executive Maggie Aikman collect a scandalous £245,000 when heads rolled in the wake of the ridiculous sacked-consultant Mahady affair.

Clearly, new chief executive David Chew has implemented a management regime that accords much more with the public's view of what working for a public service means - and that means importing none of the "fat cat" practices that have been the hallmark elsewhere of bringing the methods of the market to the boardrooms of public-service business. For while, arguably, NHS managers may, in the wake of the increased commercialisation of the health service, more reasonably compare their roles and rewards with those bosses elsewhere, the public looks at the level of service it receives as a measure of how well the service is run.

The question is, then, whether the service has improved as spectacularly as NHS managers' pay has. And in addition to that yardstick, we think that, providing that the bosses' basic salaries are right for the role in the first place, then the requirement for top-up bonuses diminishes - as the new regime at Burnley now seems to agree.

So good for them - and about time too. And other NHS trusts please copy.

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