NHS Brent Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has said that an armed robber it employed on a £1k-a-day interim director-level job was recruited through a staffing agency.

Craig Alexander was sacked by NHS Brent after a member of staff discovered, via an internet search, that he had previously been jailed for holding up a Tesco store at gunpoint in 2001, earning a three-and-a-half year sentence in 2007.

The conviction was not revealed in the recruitment process and Alexander also lied on his CV. According to his LinkedIn profile, he has held other management-level roles either side of serving his sentence.

Speaking to The Times, a former colleague says: “He was in charge of the entire QIPP [Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention] budget, which ran into millions.

“He has been at Brent over a year and was a big bully. Everyone was scared of him. You get in his way and you are sacked. There had been many complaints about Craig to the executive team but nothing was done about it.”

A former colleague recommending Alexander via his LinkedIn page says “it was a pleasure working with Craig and I hope I can do so again in the future”.

Contradictory media reports suggest the recruitment agency in question may have had its contract with the body suspended. The CCG’s media enquiries team did not answer numerous calls from Recruiter this morning to clarify the situation.

Earlier this month, it was revealed that one of the US’s most wanted fugitives had been on the run for nine years and had since found a job as a manager in a Sainsbury's store in Gravesend in Kent.