The NHS trust which runs a mental health unit in Prestwich that faced heavy criticism after a shocking BBC programme has been slammed in a fresh inspection report.

Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GMMH) has been given the lowest possible rating after its latest inspection by the healthcare watchdog, the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

The trust, which has its headquarters at The Curve in Prestwich, was visited by inspectors between January 31 and March 6 and has been given an overall score of "inadequate".

GMMH covers a number of services and sites across Bury and Greater Manchester, including the Edenfield Centre in Prestwich, which came under fire last year after BBC show Panorama caught vile insults and abuse staff hurled at patients on camera. 

The CQC acknowledged that the trust "declared a critical incident following the incidents at the Edenfield Centre and put in place a number of immediate actions to ensure the safety of patients and address the most urgent quality and safety issues".

But the regulator found the trust's leadership and safety was "inadequate" in the fresh inspection.

And its effectiveness, responsiveness and whether it is caring were all ranked as "requires improvement".

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The report said: “We rated the trust’s core services as inadequate overall for safe.

“The assessment of well led gave us some significant concerns about the assurance of the quality and safety of the trusts’ provision of services across the board.

“The trust had experienced significant changes at board level which had destabilised the board.

“These changes meant we were not assured that all senior leaders had the necessary experience, knowledge, and capacity to lead effectively.”

The report also stated risk issues were not always managed and acted upon by leaders in a timely manner which caused some concern.

During the inspection, the CQC talked with 69 patients and nine carers about their experience of the service and visited 10 secure wards, 22 acute wards and three community-based mental health teams for adults.

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For patients in the acute wards for adults, patients provided mixed feedback regarding their treatment by staff.

The report said: “A large majority were positive regarding the care they received and their interactions with the staff, stating that they felt safe and well supported.

“However, some were negative and did not appreciate some of the blanket restrictions in place.

“They felt unsafe at times and that some night staff were disrespectful in their attitudes or behaviour towards them.”

For patients in the secure wards, most patients said that staff were respectful and polite.

One said that staff were rude but did not give any examples.

The report added: “Prior to the pandemic, patients had access to a bus service, which helped facilitate their leave from the unit.

“This stopped during the pandemic but had not been reinstated.

“Patients told us that this meant they had to walk from the unit to leave the site, which was a long distance, or use taxis.

“We raised this with senior managers, who agreed to investigate with a view to reinstating the service as soon as possible.”

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However, some positive comments were made about the trust, which included that staff had reported that the culture had significantly improved over the past few months.

And improvements were made in some departments.

But staff did not always feel like they were taken seriously or supported when raising concerns.

The trust was given a list of actions that they must take to improve as a whole and in relation to the acute wards, secure wards and community-based mental health services for adults.

The trust has been told it must ensure there are effective governance systems and processes in place to ensure that services operate safely and that risks to patients are assessed, monitored and mitigated, it must review the policy with regards to immediate life support training and levels of training provided to staff, and it needs to ensure staff are compliant with mandatory and essential training among other objectives.

Jan Ditheridge, GMMH's interim chief executive, said: “We recognise and are very sorry for the failings reflected in these reports.

“We are most sorry to our service users and carers whose care and treatment has been affected by these failings.

“We know there is much work to do, and we need to quickly restore confidence.

“There are some promising signs, and the CQC have recognised where there have been improvements.

“We are committed to keep progressing our improvement plan.

“The inspections took place earlier this year and I can see even during my short time here that a tremendous amount of work has taken place and will continue, to make the required improvements.

“I have met many staff, service users and partners since I started and I'm confident we are all committed to making change happen.

“The CQC has identified improvements at our secure forensic wards, our community-based mental health services for adults of working age, as well as in their separate, focused inspection on the safety of our wards for older people at Woodlands Hospital.

“As a result, ratings for these have improved from ‘inadequate’ to ‘requires improvement’.

“The CQC also observed an improvement in culture, and that staff were confident about how to raise concerns.

“We will continue to work hard to improve the experience of our service users and their carers and make GMMH a great place to work.”

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