The health service has agreed to pay nearly £300,000 compensation to 16 women who accused a senior psychiatrist of sexual abuse. Only one claim was proved in court but health officials admitted failure to investigate complaints against the consultant over more than 20 years.

The women were treated in North Yorkshire by William Kerr, now 77, who escaped a full trial on medical grounds when former patients broke their silence five years ago. Publicity prompted a series of women to reveal they had reported abuse and improper behaviour, to no avail.

A judge at Leeds crown court decided in 2000 that a degenerative brain disease made Kerr unfit to stand trial, but a jury concluded in an unusual "finding of facts" that he had indecently assaulted a woman cancer victim referred to him after her husband committed suicide.

Kerr, of Easingwold near York, was suspended by the General Medical Council. A hearing into whether he should be struck off has not yet ended and an NHS inquiry into the handling of women's complaints in the past has yet to report.

The settlement was agreed between nine women involved in the court proceedings, seven who were not and the North Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire strategic health authority, which took over the issue from defunct predecessors in the Harrogate, Ripon and York areas.

Kathy Haq, one of the women involved in the settlement at Harrogate county court, said: "We are all relieved. We feel that someone has taken responsibility."