The news that Stuart Welling has "saved" his job because of the "improvement" in performance of Brighton Healthcare NHS Trust over the past three months left me shaking my head in disbelief.

This organisation managed to mislay my mother's important X-rays for a period of nearly four months - the same period the "failing" trust was being assessed.

My mother was finally seen by a consultant in January and diagnosed as having a collapsed vertebra - it needs no great imagination to realise how much suffering this causes.

The irony is that the next stage of treatment requires a scan, which means a further wait of three months.

My mother is as far down the queue as she has ever been. An official complaint has been lodged.

Chief executives of NHS trusts should be held accountable for mistakes.

Mr Welling has presided over a trust that has officially been recorded as "failing" for a number of years.

It is something akin to a football team starting in the Premiership and falling rapidly through Divisions One and Two but its manager being deemed competent because it never ended up in the Conference League.

Mr Welling should have done the honourable thing and resigned his position as soon as his management was called into question.

-A Edgar, Overdown Rise, Portslade