Antony Jacobson promises to bring a breath of fresh air to the borough's health service.

The newly appointed chairman of Barnet Health Authority seemed to do the impossible on Monday night when he single-handedly convinced Barnet's health watchdog to postpone its legal action.

He did so without changing anyone's mind about the health authority's culpability in the latest round of savage cuts at Barnet General.

Neither did he convince us that the Wellhouse Trust will be able to correct its current financial failings when it has failed miserably to do so in the past.

What Mr Jacobson did exude was credibility by the bucketload. He is a man who will do all that he can to improve the borough's health service. So it is wise to gamble on his ability to translate that credibility into action.

First he must deliver a thorough consultation on what the £7million of cuts to services will mean. What is required is not the vague strategy arrived at by the recent New Edgware Review, but forensic scrutiny of how health service managers decided that these planned cuts to services are inevitable.

For that we need financial transparency in our health service.

Ten months on from the closure of Edgware General hospital we still don't know whether it saved the millions of pounds promised for re-investment in local services.

Worse still, the Private Finance Initiative which should pay for the second half of Barnet Hospital looks increasingly precarious.

We must wish Mr Jacobson success. Otherwise he may yet experience the CHC's determination to be a watchdog with teeth.

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