Deaths inquiry left trust unprepared for CQC inspection

A trust has claimed it was left unprepared for an unannounced Care Quality Commission inspection because of the demands of an inquiry into historic care failures.

Essex Partnership University Foundation Trust received a surprise visit from Care Quality Comission inspectors in November last year. This resulted in a warning notice being issued to the trust in April 2026.  The regulator identified “significant shortfalls” in safety, with inspectors “concerned to find leaders… weren’t always acting quickly on safety concerns raised by their staff”.

EPUT is the subject of the statutory Lampard inquiry into the deaths of at least 2,000 mental health patients between 2000 and 2023. The inquiry is not due to report until at least 2028.

EPUT’s latest board papers  reveal the trust’s compliance team were “refocused” between autumn 2025 and January this year to tackle a large request from the inquiry to provide witness statements. EPUT was legally required to fulfil the request.

As a result, the compliance team was unable to carry out scheduled quality checks of its long-stay and rehabilitation wards. These could have alerted the trust to problems identified by the CQC before the inspection. 

The trust said this showed ”the unintended consequence of needing to prioritise focus in this challenging time”.

The trust’s outgoing chief executive, Paul Scott, added that dealing with the demands of the inquiry had been “more difficult than any of us could have predicted”.

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Source: HSJ, 2 June 2026