Dear colleague,

I am pleased to tell you that we have been taken out of NHS England’s Recovery Support Programme, and that BHRUT is no longer in ‘special measures.’

This recognises the improvements we have made in our finances, the stability of our leadership, and in A&E waiting times where we were the most improved Trust in England last year.

This has taken a lot of hard work by many people across our hospitals. We still have a lot to do to make sure that we deliver care that we are proud of, and that our patients are happy with. But leaving special measures is good news for our Trust and is, I think, a fair reflection of the progress we have made so far.

As Caroline Clarke, Director for NHS London, said at the opening of our two new theatres: “It’s fantastic to see this whole Trust make a really big leap forward. We’ve seen so many improvements and we’re so impressed. We’re really looking forward to what else you can do for the people of north east London.”

This decision demonstrates the confidence our national colleagues have in us that we no longer require the highest level of support. It also means we’re better placed to bid for funding, such as the £35m we need to expand our Emergency Department (ED) at Queen’s Hospital to put an end to corridor care.

Alongside a better grip of our finances, other criteria, including leadership and governance, and urgent and emergency care (UEC) performance, also needed to be met.

Backed by a substantive Executive team and dedicated site teams responsible for day-to-day operations across our hospitals, this sustained and strengthened clinical leadership has meant better support for teams to improve the quality of our care and we ended the year 6th out of 18 acute London trusts and 29th out of 122 in England for our A&E performance.

While we still have significant challenges to address, this milestone shows we’re developing into an organisation worthy of attracting the very best talent from across north east London (NEL), regionally and nationally.

Our ambition now is to move up to NOF 2, which means oversight at a north east London level rather than national. To realise this, we need to manage services within budget; control staffing levels so they don’t exceed our funded establishment; and increase our planned activity by a further 10%.

We also need to look outwards, working with our partners at Place (including other NHS organisations, local authorities, and the voluntary sector) and as part of an Acute Provider Collaborative with Barts Health and Homerton Healthcare to harness the opportunities this offers to improve care for patients across not just our three boroughs but across the whole of NEL.

Today shows us what we can achieve when we work together and set our ambitions high, and I have every confidence that we’ll progress to NOF 2 as we continue to improve the experiences of both our staff and patients.

I hope you have a great weekend.

Matthew Trainer

Chief Executive