THE organisation responsible for challenging and reining in bosses of a Hampshire health trust is “powerless” to impose changes, one of its members has claimed.

Governors of Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust will meet today to scrutinise bosses following a damning report slamming the organisation for failing to investigate the deaths of hundreds of people.

But public governor John Green says the failings are down to a trust regime which essentially renders the governors as a “sideshow” toothless to make changes.

It comes as he launches a set of radical ideas aiming at overhauling the NHS to ensure improvements and made and patients can be better protected.

As previously reported inspectors from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) have launched a probe at the trust and began visiting its centres last week.

It follows the publication of scathing report commissioned by NHS England, carried out by Mazars, criticising the trust for failing to investigate the deaths of people with mental health problems and learning difficulties.

Families have criticised the Council of Governors for failing to hold leaders to account and have demanded executives resign.

In an essay set out in the agenda of today;s meeting at Lyndhurst Community Centre, Mr Green writes: “Although I consider the roles of governors as relatively powerless and relatively powerless and no more than a sideshow to the main event produced and directed by the Department of Health and NHS England a number of governors over the past three years have challenged the board about the way SHFT is managed.”

But he added: “The Council of Governors is provided with too little information to enable them to hold anybody to account let alone whether disciplinary actions be taken against individuals.”

He likens the NHS to a “Stalinist regime” and identifies a series of “deep rooted” causes in management failings including too little focus on improving health for the community, on improving complaints procedures, a lack of business and management training and too much focus on cost cutting and public relations.

Today he is calling for the Governors to consider a raft of recommendations for improvements including: -Appointing an independent employment advisor to advise the governors over the trust board’s conduct.

- Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to investigate the root causes of management failures in the trust and the NHS to challenge blame culture.

-Overhauling the trust’s complaints procedures for more involvement by Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) A trust spokeswoman refused to comment before Mr Green’s report is discussed at the meeting.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said Mr Hunt has already launched a CQC inspection into death investigations at trusts and added: “It is important that the NHS properly investigates unexpected deaths to learn lessons and improve care.”

A spokeswoman for Southampton City Council CCG said people can already submit complaints to their organisation and added: “We are committed to ensuring that health services in Southampton are as good as they can be and high quality, safe care for local people is our top priority.”