- Independent mental health service
Priory Hospital Enfield
Assessment report published 16 February 2026
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Priory Hospital Enfield is provided by Partnerships in Care Limited. The service provides acute and forensic mental health inpatient care. The service is a 53 bedded unit, with 41 forensic beds across 3 wards and 1 acute ward with 12 beds. Byron Ward is a low secure unit and Coleridge Ward and Keats Ward are medium secure. Blake Ward is an acute mental health ward for women.
Priory Hospital Enfield was last inspected by the CQC in September 2021. The hospital was rated Good overall. The acute ward was rated Requires Improvement for Responsive. The forensic service received an overall rating of requires improvement.
Following this inspection, the overall rating for the hospital location remains Good.
Acute wards have been rated Good in all domains. The forensic wards were rated Good in Safe, Effective, Caring and Response and rated Requires Improvement in Well-Led.
We found several areas of good practice. There had been significant recruitment of staff within the hospital, with reduced use of agency staff. Overall, we found an improvement in monitoring of rapid tranquilisation including staff training and audits. We found evidence of good patient involvement in their ward rounds. Staff described good teamwork on the wards and there were structured and recorded meetings on the wards. Patients told us staff were kind and treated them well. We found an improvement in staff ensuring patients were informed of their rights and a patient representative attended clinical governance meetings at the hospital. Patients could access a range of interventions and activities in line with national guidance.
Prior to the inspection we received several anonymous whistleblowing concerns about the hospital regarding restrictive practices, overmedication, physical health monitoring, a closed culture, discrimination in recruitment, and a punitive approach to complex behavioural issues. Overall, we did not find evidence of these concerns.
We did identify some areas for improvement across the wards. In the forensic wards, although leaders understood what the local risks were and had quality assurance measures in place, at the time of the inspection, oversight was not sufficient to find and address errors in staff documentation of seclusion, medicines administration, and rapid tranquilisation. Observation records at night did not always have the level of detail recommended in best practice. Across the service it was identified that areas of improvement were care plans and documentation and the provider was in the process of training staff in these areas.