McCree elected chairman

Alison McCree has been elected chairman of the Hospital Caterers Association for a two-year period. She succeeds Neil Watson-Jones.

Commenting on her appointment she said: "I am committed to taking health service catering to even higher standards, to achieving greater status for the profession, to ensuring that clinicians and NHS trust managers recognise that food is as integral to patient care as any medication or treatment, and to promoting the need for hospital food service to be geared to the patient, not the system."

McCree began her career in public sector catering in 1984 when she became a catering assistant and then an NHS trainee cook at Dryburn Hospital in Durham. In 1988 she was appointed head of hotel services at South Durham Health Care NHS Trust and then, in 2003, she moved to her present position as associate director of estates and facilities at County Durham & Darlington Acute Hospital Trust.

Graham Walker, general manager of catering at Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Trust, London, and an HCA member for 20 years, fills McCree's former role as vice-chairman.