A PUBLIC servant paid more than half a million pounds to save the ambulance service is leaving before his own plan has been fully implemented.

Chief executive Anthony Marsh and the East of England Ambulance Service are parting company next year.

The expert troubleshooter was brought in to head an organisation struggling to get to the most serious incidents in time.

He has helped bring in more than a hundred more ambulances and hundreds of student paramedics to try to turn things around.

But he will be gone before his own plan is completed and before response times are met.

The service has refused to answer questions about whose decision it was for him to go.

A spokesman for the trust said: “Anthony Marsh was brought in to accelerate improvements in immediate service delivery and to build the foundations for long-term sustainability.

“As a result of a series of actions he put in place, long ambulance delays are significantly reduced, performance is improving, complaints are down and compliments are up, although we recognise there is still much work for us to do.

“Following two previous unsuccessful attempts to recruit a chief executive, the board will plan a new recruitment programme in 2015. In the meantime Anthony will continue as chief executive.”

The trust is now claiming the plan was always for him to only remain for up to two years.

Dr Marsh, who also runs the West Midlands Ambulance Service, was a controversial choice because he was running services across 11 counties.

The trust has been spending more than £20,000 a year on taxis and hotels for him to come down from the midlands.

He is paid £232,000 a year for the combined role with a £33,000 pension contribution and expenses which top £300,000 a year – or more than double the Prime Minister’s pay.

The trust defended the bumper pay deal, claiming it was split over two trusts so worked out cheaper and was worth it because of Dr Marsh’s exceptional successes in the past.

The changes he brought in have been widely welcomed, but Dr Marsh admitted it would take at least two years to turn things around, by which time he will be elsewhere and no longer accountable for whether they work or not.

The latest response figures still have ambulances failing to hit response times for people suffering the most serious medical conditions such as heart attacks.

The trust is recruiting 400 student paramedics and bringing in 147 ambulances.