A huge turnover of key positions at Medway Maritime is leading to instability at the struggling hospital, it was claimed this week.

Following our story about huge salaries earned by senior staff at the trust we can reveal that it has lost 13 top executives in 18 months.

This figure does not includes the interim managers drafted in while permanent replacements are found.

The hospital has been struggling in its standards of care and in finances for years and was put into special measures in July 2013 due to concern over death rates, A&E waiting times and safety concerns. This week it emerged that chief operations officer Morag Jackson, has quietly left the Medway NHS Foundation Trust and her £100,000 per year salary.

She started in November last year, together with Dr Trisha Bain chief quality officer and Roberta Barker director of workforce, and the three were hailed by chief executive Lesley Dwyer as forming part of the “new permanent executive team” which would “lead the move towards a healthcare provider that will deliver the high quality care the residents of Medway and Swale deserve”.

Also set to go is chief nurse Dr Steve Beaumont who also started less than a year ago, on £110,000 a year.

They join 11 other senior people who left over the past 18 months, including chairman Christopher Langley, who was on £14,000 for one day’s work a week.

Teresa Murray, Medway Labour’s health spokeswoman said: “The high turnover of top staff does add to a feeling of instability for the rest of the staff and leads to workers not trusting what they are told as they think managers will just move on anyway.

“It’s a real dilemma as the turnover and reputation makes it hard to attract staff at all. In my view part of the contracts should be a minimum period of retention of at least two years especially as the managers earn such high salaries.”

Last year director of strategy and infrastructure, Jason Seez (£70,000 a year) left in December, director of organisational development Raj Bhamber (£125,000 a year) in September and interim director of transformation Margaret Blackett in June. None of them has been replaced.

The hospital did not confirm if the roles themselves has been axed in a bid to cut costs, or if hiring was an issue.

A number of non-executive directors have also gone.

Additionally Dr Phillip Barnes, the medical director who joined in August 2013 and for almost a year was acting chief executive, is also rumoured to be leaving the trust for some time on a secondment, but the hospital declined to confirm this.

A spokeswoman for the hospital said today: “Medway NHS Foundation Trust’s Chief Nurse, Dr Steven Beaumont, will now return to his role at the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) after working with us on secondment. Karen Rule, who has been Deputy Chief Nurse at the Trust for the last year, is replacing Steven as Chief Nurse. The Chief Operating Officer, Morag Jackson, has now left the Trust and we currently have no plans to recruit another Chief Operating Officer. Both Dr Steven Beaumont and Morag Jackson were instrumental in implementing the Trust’s improvement plan and we wish them all the best in their respective futures.”