HUDDERSFIELD’S hospital trust is to get its chief executive back full-time.

Diane Whittingham, the woman at the top of Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, has been dividing her time between Huddersfield and East Lancashire Hospitals.

She was seconded to the then-failing trust in September 2009, but her time in East Lancashire appears close to an end after an ad appeared for a replacement.

The East Lancashire trust’s chairman, Hazel Harding, said it had made “great strides” during Mrs Whittingham’s tenure as interim chief executive.

She said: “We now have a much-improved financial position, consistently exceed government standards for emergency department and urgent care centre waiting times and have a mortality rate below our expected level.

“We are looking forward to a bright future.

“We have begun the process to recruit a substantive chief executive and are working towards becoming a foundation trust serving the people of East Lancashire and Blackburn with Darwen.”

An ad for the role said the trust was looking for a candidate with “strategic vision, commercial acumen, resilience and tenacity in abundance” to meet the challenge of NHS reorganisation and to help the trust achieve foundation trust status by 2013.

The two trusts are in talks to form a partnership to see them share “back office functions”.