HEALTHWATCHES across the South East are “extremely disappointed” by South East Coast Ambulance Trust’s failings.

The Care Quality Commission has just published the results of its in-depth inspection of SECAmb and recommended the trust be placed in special measures.

The inspection highlighted serious concerns including:

• In some cases, there were not enough staff, meaning those that work for the ambulance trust were under extreme pressure and overly tired

• The trust was not meeting national targets for ambulance response times

• 111 calls were not always responded to quickly enough

• Equipment was not always maintained or supplied

• A culture of bullying and harassment existed

• Leadership was not supporting the staff to work properly.

The trust, which covers Kent, Surrey, Sussex and North East Hampshire, said it already had a recovery plan in place and had taken action across a number of areas to address concerns.

The report gives the trust a ‘good’ rating for its service being caring – but judged the service ‘inadequate’ overall.

Commenting on behalf of all the six South Healthwatches, Healthwatch Surrey’s Kate Scribbins said: “Naturally we are extremely disappointed to hear the announcement. Our ambulance trust has hit the headlines on several occasions in recent months and not for positive reasons.

“It is now imperative the trust works with patients and Healthwatch to make immediate improvements and that the public are reassured. People can help us in two ways, firstly by sharing their experience of the ambulance service with us and secondly by volunteering with Healthwatch and helping to improve services.”

SECAmb said that although recruiting and retaining enough staff remained a “significant issue,” 60 new front-line staff had joined the trust since April, together with 18 paramedics and 42 more emergency care support workers, with a further 289 staff in the pipeline to join by April 2017.

In addition, 53 new 999 call-takers have joined the trust with a further 40 to come by the year end.

At NHS 111, 62 new health advisors have started this year and a further 36 are joining over coming months.

A detailed action plan focused on recruitment, staff retention, operational performance, staff consultation and external relationships with other public organisations has been developed for NHS 111. The trust claimed, as a result, its performance had steadily improved and in August it surpassed performance trajectories agreed with commissioners, on all measures.

The trust said it had worked hard to raise awareness of safeguarding processes with all staff, as well as creating a new process for on-going monitoring of safeguarding referrals by operational staff.

SECAmb’s acting chief executive Geraint Davies said: “I fully recognise this is a challenging time for the trust and accept these are serious concerns which we must address.

“We understand the seriousness of placement into special measures but value the additional support this offers us.

“We expect the move will mean the work we have already started can continue at pace.”