Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust

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Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (EPUT) is an NHS foundation trust that provides community health, mental health and learning disability services to about 1.3 million people in Bedfordshire, Essex, Suffolk and Luton. It was formed on 1 April 2017 by merging South Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust and North Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust. Its headquarters are in Runwell, Essex, and it employed around 7,445 staff in 2023/24. The chair is Hattie Llewelyn-Davies and the chief executive is Paul Scott.

In 2021, the Health and Safety Executive fined the trust £1.5 million after a prosecution linked to 11 deaths between 2004 and 2015 at North Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust, where ligature risks were not properly managed. Also in 2021, the Care Quality Commission rated EPUT as inadequate and stopped it from admitting new patients without consent due to serious concerns in children and young people’s mental health services.

EPUT and North East London NHS Foundation Trust were part of an independent inquiry into mental health services in Essex, called the Essex Mental Health Independent Inquiry. In January 2023, the chair said EPUT had not cooperated fully and had revealed that about 2,000 deaths of mental health patients were now known, instead of the 1,500 previously reported. The inquiry was upgraded to a full statutory inquiry led by Baroness Lampard in the summer of 2023.

There were inquests into deaths connected to EPUT, including Michelle Morton, who died in 2019 at The Lakes in Colchester; an inquest found a healthcare assistant attended five different incidents and staffing levels were below the authorised amount. There is also an inquest into Jayden Booroff, who died after leaving the Linden Centre in Chelmsford in October 2020.

In October 2022, Dispatches broadcast a documentary alleging serious failures at EPUT. Shortly after, the Care Quality Commission conducted a quick inspection and downgraded the trust’s rating for its acute wards from Good to Requires Improvement on 12 July 2023.