Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust serves notice on prison healthcare contracts across Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, to focus on delivering improvements highlighted in Nottingham attacks inquiry
A healthcare trust has axed it’s prison care contracts, to focus on fixing failings highlighted in an inquiry into the Nottingham attacks.
Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has confirmed it has served notice on prison healthcare contracts it currently delivers on behalf of NHS England — at HMP Lincoln, HMP North Sea Camp, HMP Morton Hall, HMP Fosse Way, HMP Nottingham, HMP Ranby, HMP Lowdham Grange, and the Swinderby short-term holding facility.
The contracts deliver primary healthcare, mental healthcare and substance misuse services to the prisons, to help secure inmates’ wellbeing and reduce re-offending behaviour.
The trust will continue to provide care until a new provider is found to take over, and none of the trust’s others services will be affected.
The decision to end the contracts, the trust has explained, was taken to allow it to focus on achieving necessary improvements, following a special review ordered by the health and social care secretary under section 48 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008.
It followed the killings of Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates in Nottingham in June 2023, as the trust had previously cared for killer Valdo Calocane.
The Care Quality Commission’s report highlighted a series of errors, omissions, and misjudgements in Calocane’s care, and a number of wider issues in mental health care provision in Nottinghamshire.
Nottinghamshire Healthcare’s chief operating officer, Becky Sutton, said: “We can confirm that we have served notice on the offender health (prison healthcare) contracts that we currently deliver on behalf of NHS England.
“Following the Section 48 recommendations, our priority is to focus our capacity and resources on achieving the objectives of our Integrated Improvement Plan. We will be working closely with colleagues who are affected, partners at NHS England and prison services to support a smooth transition of services when a new provider is identified, and until that time our teams will continue to provide care in these settings.”
Current prison healthcare staff will be able to transfer to the new provider, once identified, and are to be supported through the process by the trust.
The trust’s Integrated Improvement Plan aims to improve patient safety, give opportunity for care staff to help direct how the trust works, save money to reinvest in services, see invesment in its workforce, and improve how the trust is held to account.
