Medway Maritime Hospital is embarking on a five-year journey of improvement under the leadership of the new chairman of the Medway NHS Foundation Trust, Shena Winning.

Mrs Winning took over at the helm of the trust on September 8, and has a clear vision for the failing hospital.

Speaking at a council health scrutiny committee meeting last night she said: "I don’t have anything particularly fancy. We’re looking for a well led, functional, sustainable hospital but in order to get to the vision, there’s a journey to be had.

"It’s a reactive not a proactive organisation that has had many people poking it and amending it and driving it in different directions."

Mrs Winning said the hospital, which has been in special measures for more than a year, was an "internally focused organisation" with an "absence of stable management and structure" and a "drastic disconnect between management and clinical staff".

Her vision for the hospital begins with an 18-month plan, by the end of which she hopes the work will start to demonstrate clear improvement.

In five years time she hopes to "have a sustainable organisation that has the ability to look around and go from there".

The plan includes a new organisation structure at management, clinical and nursing levels as well as the reorganisation of the emergency part of the hospital which is already underway.

A&E was closed for 12 hours at the end of July to make changes to the way the department assessed patients on arrival and ensure all admissions were given an initial assessment within 15 minutes.

Mrs Winning said: "We are still on the journey, we have some support from an experienced emergency department clinician and he has given us some very hard hitting words like we saw in the [Care Quality Commission] report.

"The task we’ve got ahead of us for the next year is probably greater than what you want to see for a hospital the size of Medway."

The heath watchdog Care Quality Commission (CQC) made unannounced inspections of A&E in July and August and raised continuing concerns. The report on the July inspections was released last week in which inspectors said the hospital was still in a "state of crisis".

The August report is expected to be published soon.

Mrs Winning said they want to create a hospital with a better management team, and the structure at board level will mirror some of the best hospitals.

She said: "We need a dose of clinical leadership training, we need them to take charge of the activity within their particular area, to manage their own but also manage across and be collaborative.

"The disconnect that there has been in the past has been destructive to the trust and that needs to be repaired."

Medway Maritime was placed in special measures in July 2013. Since then it has been closely monitored by CQC. In April inspectors found the hospital had not made enough improvements and ruled that it must stay in special measures indefinitely.