Health staff are asked: How cool was Hitler?

Ambulance staff in the West Midlands were asked to rate how "cool" Adolf Hitler was as part of a leadership questionnaire funded by taxpayers.

The survey was part of a £10,000 project to find out what makes a good boss. The project, called Making Leadership Cool; How Do Emerging Leaders Want to be Supported and Managed?, asked staff to rate how 'cool' leaders were.

Subjects given included Sir Richard Branson, Gordon Brown, Adolf Hitler, Fabio Cappello and West Midlands Ambulance Service's own chief executive Ian Cummings.

The survey, contained in a newsletter, was circulated to the service's 3,300 workers at the end of last month and asked staff to rate leaders on a scale of one to five.

Bosses today defended the move, but admitted that "with hindsight" a better example could have been chosen over Adolf Hitler as one of the examples. Spokeswoman Claire Thomas said: "The project is a year-long study being conducted by two members of staff.

"The project is important in identifying the key characteristics of good leadership, to allow the organ- isation to be more efficient and effective which will have a positive impact on improving patient care.

"With hindsight, it would have been better to have used a different example to illustrate this. There was no intention to cause any offence - it was an examination of well-known examples of this style of leadership."

The project was funded by the regional strategic health authority. Health chiefs will use the results to develop a 'Leadership Development Programme' to be published next April.

Fiona McEvoy, from the TaxPayers' Alliance, said the survey was "absurd".

"This is an utterly ridiculous waste of taxpayers' money," she said.

"It's pretty obvious what people are going to think of Hitler, and has nothing to do with the ambulance service at all."