Board review governance - assurance not reassurance

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 Trust commissioned an independent governance review by Deloitte in 2023.

• Feedback was provided to Trust Board by Deloitte on the 11th October 2023 with a final report issued to the Trust on 13/12/23 after the publication of the Inquiry recommendation report.

• The main proposed changes were considered at the Executive Team Meeting (ETM) on 16/01/24. The Trust Board then considered the proposals at a dedicated Trust Board Seminar session on 25/01/24, and a series of steps were agreed. The agreed changes are being implemented from February 2024.

• The Trust is making significant changes to its governance structures in response to detailed findings from the Fuller Inquiry Phase 1 report as well as the findings from the inspections that the CQC conducted at the Trust during 2023, and an independent review by Deloitte LLP in 2023 (the final report from which was issued to the Trust in December 2023). The changes include measures to strengthen the functioning of the Quality Committee and its sub-committees.

• The Executive Team Meeting (ETM) held a ‘time out’ session in February 2024 to consider “Reflections on the Public Inquiry into the Fuller crimes: Identify individual and organisational learning from the public inquiry into the Fuller crimes”. That session has been informed by the Phase 1 report of the Fuller Inquiry and other relevant information, which includes the “Out of sight, out of mind” report by The Guardian Service Ltd.

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.