Hospital chief who oversaw the biggest outbreak of killer superbug demands her £75,000 pay-off is doubled

Rose Gibb, who left her £150,000-a-year job following the deaths of at least 90 patients from Clostridium difficile, is taking legal action to secure a full severance package.

She has already survived an attempt by Health Secretary Alan Johnson to block her payoff from Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust in Kent.

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The trust sought legal advice which resulted in them halving their original offer of a year's salary.

Miss Gibb left her job "by mutual consent" last October, after a damning Healthcare Commission report criticised her handling of the deadly C. diff infection which hit 1,176 people in three hospitals between 2004 and 2006.

There was shocking hygiene in the hospitals - Maidstone, the Kent and Sussex and Pembury - where the stomach bug killed 90 patients and was found to have hastened the deaths of another 180.

Sources say Miss Gibb and the trust's management knew months before publication that the report would be highly critical of her performance and it was agreed she would leave but with a package involving a year's salary.

Jon Restell, chief executive of her union Managers in Partnership, said: "Our lawyers have advised us that she is entitled to the full sum originally determined by the trust."

Miss Gibb refused to comment yesterday. But there was anger from families of those who died in the C. diff outbreaks.

Tony Charlton, the son-in-law of 86-year-old victim Florrie Field, said: "It shows utter cynicism on her part.

"She should not have been allowed to leave the way she did, four days before the report came out.

"If she had stayed she would have been sacked for gross misconduct and she would have got nothing."

Last week it emerged that Miss Gibb, 47, has embarked on a new career, advising health managers on how to run their hospitals more efficiently.

She has set up a company called Resolve Healthcare Consulting Services with her partner Mark Rees, who also quit a senior NHS job with a £170,000 payout after the trust he ran accumulated debts of £30million.

Graziella Kontkowski, who runs the C. diff Support Group, said: "The final straw is that she's running a company advising the NHS on how to improve hospitals - why didn't she use those skills when her own trust managed the C.diff outbreaks so badly?

"I hope the Department of Health is going to fight this legal challenge."