A struggling hospitals trust paid a temporary health chief close to £1,000 a day for 19 weeks' work, it has emerged.

The generous pay packet - amounting to between £80,000 and £85,000 - was awarded to Peter Carter OBE while he was interim chairman of East Kent Hospitals.

His predecessor, Nikki Cole, was paid as little as £50,000 for an entire year's work, an annual salary typical for a chair of a trust of east Kent's size.

She had stepped down not long after the resignation of former chief executive Matthew Kershaw amid months of poor A&E performance, which left patients enduring the country’s worst waiting times.

Mr Carter was appointed to lead the NHS body, made up of five hospitals in Canterbury, Margate, Ashford, Dover and Folkestone, on a temporary basis last October.

Formerly the chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing and the Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, his salary was also considerably higher than that of his successor and their equivalents at other Kent trusts.

Professor Stephen Smith, who took over as the trust’s permanent chair in February, receives between £60,000 and £65,000 a year.

The chairman of Medway NHS Foundation Trust, Stephen Clark, was awarded £45-50,000 last year, while David Highton of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, earned £35-40,000.

And while East Kent Hospitals says short-term contracts are often paid at a higher rate, Mr Carter’s pay packet was more than double the £35-40,000 he received while serving as interim chairman of Medway for five months between October 2016 and March 2017.

Kathy Walters, regional officer for the trade union Unite, says the amount paid by East Kent Hospitals - which could have funded the salaries of three fully qualified nurses for a full year - was unjustifiable.

“This is an enormous sum for East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust to pay its interim chair Peter Carter and can’t be justified in any form, given the cash squeeze that the NHS is still enduring,” she said.

“This figure shows that some top NHS bosses are still living in a gravy train bubble that is a gross insult to those on the increasingly long waiting lists for routine operations.

“Unite, which has 100,000 members in the health service, demands the trust explains the business rationale as to why Peter Carter deserves such a large pay packet compared with his predecessor, Nikki Cole.

“What extra special qualities does Mr Carter bring to the job?

“Recently, NHS staff in England agreed a pay deal that saw the majority of staff receive 6.5% over the next three years.

“For many of our hardworking, and often low-paid members, it looks like Peter Carter has scooped the National Lottery.

“To top it all, this is the same trust that set up a wholly owned subsidiary company in order to avoid VAT and save money – the stench of hypocrisy is overwhelming.”

The chair of an NHS trust heads up a board of directors, which is responsible for setting strategy and objectives which are then delivered by the chief executive.

A spokesman for East Kent Hospitals described Mr Carter’s pay as “an interim rate for his time with us as interim chair”.

“Peter Carter is a highly experienced interim chair and East Kent Hospitals is one of the largest acute trusts in the country,” they said.

“As a Foundation Trust, our Council of Governors appointed Peter Carter as interim Chair.

"Our regulator, NHS Improvement, was supportive of the appointment.”