Trust deals with many matters behind closed doors

Published: 4 March 2010

• ONE of the points that came out of the recent Francis Report on the Mid-Staffs NHS Trust disaster was how much secrecy surrounded the proceedings of its board and other committees. 

On that basis we need to be extremely concerned about developments within our local Camden & Islington NHS Foundation Trust which, under its new chairman Richard Arthur, has moved to having fewer board meetings – just four per year – and to increase the amount of business that is being conducted in the closed parts of these meetings from which the press and public are excluded.

Among its principles this FT has “openness and involvement”.

It is hard to see how it can claim to be living up to either of these when so much of what it does or is planning is shrouded in secrecy and its current governor elections don’t seem to have been held in accordance with its own rules. 

This trust has consistently failed to consider its patients while it has cut services and while it increased the number of managers and their remuneration.

The Camden & Islington NHS Foundation Trust holds itself up as a high-scoring organisation, but questions have been raised about how it achieved those results. 

Andy Burnham, the health secretary, has suggested that managers and directors in NHS trusts should be professionally accountable in future. 

Nowhere could this be more needed than in this trust which provides the local mental health services in a framework where there seem to be more managers than clinicians.
David J Brown
Haverstock Hill, NW3