Non-mortuary staff accompanied in mortuary

Today I am updating the House on the response to those recommendations. The Trust published an assurance statement in February 2024 on the implementation of the recommendations from the Phase 1 report. This sets out the progress made to implement the Inquiry’s recommendations.

The range of actions taken by the Trust include requiring that non-mortuary staff and contractors are always accompanied by another staff member when visiting the mortuaries; controlling access to mortuaries using swipe cards; mandating contractors to renew security clearances every three years; and installing CCTV coverage monitoring access to and from mortuary areas. The Trust Board is also providing greater oversight and assurance of legally regulated activity in the mortuary.

I am also reassured that NHS England’s South East regional team held monthly oversight meetings with the Trust between November 2023 and April 2024 (in partnership with Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board) to ensure progress against the Inquiry’s recommendations and to review evidence of the Trust’s progress in delivering their action plan. Ongoing compliance with the Inquiry's recommendations will be monitored by NHS England through regular regional oversight meetings with the Trust, and through other channels as appropriate.

The Trust now complies with this recommendation in full on the following basis:

• The mortuary is only accessible using a swipe card. Only mortuary staff, the bereavement team, the security team and trained porters have a swipe card providing them access to the mortuary. This practice has been in place since 2021 and is formally documented.

• Porters require access to the mortuaries out-of-hours, to transfer deceased patients from inpatient areas to the mortuary fridges and to accept transfers of deceased persons from external sources (funeral directors, HM Coroner, the Police etc.). There would however always be at least two porters attending for this purpose. All porters are required to attend a 90-minute training session with mortuary staff, and be deemed competent, before they are authorised to access the mortuary with a swipe card. Porters’ adherence to the policy is checked (see Recommendations 6, 7 and 9).

• Security staff need to be able to respond to calls relating to the Mortuary. Like porters they are required to attend in pairs if there is no member of the mortuary team on site. Their access is limited to the perimeter of the mortuaries and does not cover internal locked doors. Compliance with this policy is checked through the audit of swipe card access and CCTV.

• Estates staff (i.e. Mitie staff at Tunbridge Wells Hospital and the in-house team at Maidstone Hospital) and the Site Team are not given access to the mortuaries via their swipe cards. Contractors, including maintenance staff employed by the Trust’s external facilities management provider, are therefore always accompanied by mortuary staff member when they visit the mortuary.

No statement on delivery from Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust has been found in the sources searched. This is separate from the response above.