THE chief executive of the scandal-hit South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust is taking a “mutually agreed leave of absence”, it has been confirmed.

Paul Sutton has been coming under increasing pressure after it emerged the trust was being investigated following a controversial decision to introduce an unauthorised experiment that led to ambulance delays for up to 20,000 patients.

Mr Sutton has insisted the NHS 111 pilot, brought in last winter, was purely for care and safety issues because the trust was under major pressure at the time.

Secamb delayed sending help for certain 111 calls, transferring them instead to the 999 system as part of the pilot.

An eight-day-old baby and a patient suffering an obvious stroke were among the patients whose ambulances were delayed as part of the experiment.

Secamb has also confirmed its chairman, tony Thorne, has resigned.

The announcement comes as the trust publishes the independent review undertaken by Deloitte into its pilot scheme.

This review looked specifically at the decision-making processes and governance around the implementation of the pilot.

It did not look at the impact of the pilot on patients (i.e. whether patients’ conditions were worsened or treated more effectively than usual as a result of the pilot), which is subject to a separate, clinically-led independent review, due to be concluded by June 2016.

The report said hte project was "high risk" and did not have approval from board members, the 111 NHS helpline or commissioners.

There was also a strong suggestion of an "intentional effort by members of the executive team" to present the scheme in a positive light despite its governance failings and risks.

In a statement the trust said it welcomed and accepted the findings of the review in full.

It said it recognised the governance surrounding the pilot was inadequate, and it had already started to make serious changes to the way matters of governance are managed and dealt with to make sure lessons are learnt and a lapse in governance of this sort does not happen again.

A joint recovery plan is being agreed with the trust’s commissioners and Monitor, its national regulator, to address concerns.

The full findings of the independent patient impact review will be published as soon as it is complete.

However, in the preliminary work to date, no clear indications of patient harm have been identified.

Mr Thorne was said to have Monitor in December of his intention to resign once there was a new Chair in place. Sir Peter Dixon has been appointed interim chairman at Monitor’s request.

The statement said: “Chief Executive Paul Sutton is currently taking mutually-agreed leave of absence, while the trust determines the appropriate actions to take.

“Secamb would like to take this opportunity to reassure members of the public that the trust and its staff are, and always have been, committed to delivering a high level of patient care and service.

“Staff from across the Trust are, as ever, working hard to provide a safe and highly-skilled level of professional care, which patients, quite rightly expect to receive.”

The report can be found on the trust's website.

Monitor used its regulatory powers to bring in Sir Peter.

He will focus on the immediate actions recommended by the report into inappropriate changes to the time taken to dispatch ambulances for some seriously ill patients.

Today’s report identifies a number of concerns about how decisions were taken around the project, which was run by the trust between December 2014 and February 2015.

Monitor regional director Claudia Griffith said: ““The way these projects were managed and the associated decision-making processes were flawed from the outset and we expect the trust to use the findings of today's report to make sure no decisions are taken in this way again.”