Barking Urgent Treatment Centre

On this page

• Overview
• Shared direction and culture
• Capable, compassionate and inclusive leaders
• Freedom to speak up
• Workforce equality, diversity and inclusion
• Governance, management and sustainability
• Partnerships and communities
• Learning, improvement and innovation

We looked for evidence that service leadership, management and governance assured high-quality, person-centred care; supported learning and innovation; and promoted an open culture.

At our last assessment, we rated this key question as requires improvement. At this assessment, the rating was good. This was because the leaders had improved the governance systems to provide oversight of staff competency and performance, and developed patient engagement, with a patient representative as part of the Council.

This service scored 75 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The organisation had a clear vision and credible strategy to deliver high quality care and promote good outcomes for patients. The organisation had a culture of aiming to provide high-quality sustainable care. The corporate objectives for 2025/26 were for continued improvement and aiming for excellence. The objectives included providing high quality care for patients, being a great and inclusive place to work and making the best use of the resources in the delivery of services.

The leaders described how staff had a responsibility to be part of the vision and objectives of the organisation, which had been focused on the recovery and improvement of the organisation. In addition, the strategy had moved to being more patient focused.

The internal culture focused on improving performance, with the outcome of the staff and other agencies seeing the service more positively. Most staff we spoke with said they now worked well as a team, and their concerns were listened to and acted on. They described it as a learning culture and not a blame culture.

The values, visions and strategy were on staff noticeboards and most staff were aware of and understood the vision, values and strategy and their role in achieving them. The strategy was in line with health and social priorities across the region. The provider planned the service to meet the needs of the local population. The provider monitored progress against delivery of the strategy,

The 2024 staff survey found team collaboration varied across the organisation. 33% of staff agreed that their team had a shared set of objectives, and 39% agreed that team members understood each other’s roles. In response to these findings, the service had an action plan in place which included launching an employee recognition programme and implementing structured one to one check-ins.

The Chair’s report, discussed in the December council meeting, made recommendations to the council members of how to improve the effectiveness of the organisation’s Council and to ensure the PELC constitution was followed.

Leaders had the capacity and skills to deliver high-quality, sustainable care.

PELC is a community benefit society overseen by a council which consists of local GPs across the three Boroughs, GPs who are employed within the service, members of staff and patients. The council’s role was to have oversight of the business and hold to account the leadership team to ensure they worked within their strategic remit of providing high quality care and treatment. The chair presented a report in December 2024 regarding improving the effectiveness of PELC to ensure the constitution was followed. This recommended improvements to meeting protocols, training and support for council members, the role of the chair, awareness of the council roles, the annual general meeting, and membership. In addition, the membership registers for the council and three yearly elections had been reviewed to ensure more involvement by members.

At the previous assessment, we found the company secretary, whose role in companies was to hold the board to account for governance purposes, was not fulfilling the role. At this assessment we found the organisation had a society secretary who had a specific role that was supported by dedicated administration support.

Staff told us the leaders were visible and approachable. The staff said the chief executive and two of the directors were available at the location to provide staff with the opportunity to speak with them. In addition, the service had employed onsite operational managers who were available 24/7 to provide support to the staff. Staff we spoke with told us they were able to raise concerns and were encouraged to do so. They had confidence that these would be addressed.

Staff had access to a leader’s organisational team forum where issues could be raised and responded to.

Senior management was accessible throughout the operational period; with an effective on-call system that staff were able to use.

The organisation fostered a positive culture where staff felt they could speak up and their voice would be heard. Information about the freedom to speak up guardian was displayed on posters and part of the CEO newsletter.

As part of the 2025/2026 organisation strategy the service aimed to continue to ensure dignity at work, promote staff wellbeing and encourage freedom to speak-up among all staff.

The staff we spoke with were aware of the freedom to speak up guardian and most felt confident in speaking up.

The organisation had not had any new speaking up cases from staff since November 2024.

The leaders work towards an inclusive and fair culture by improving equality and equity for people who worked for them. Staff morale was monitored through the staff survey, which had demonstrated improvements.

The most recent staff survey was carried out in April 2025. The results were an improvement on the 2024 survey but were mixed. For example, the top scoring results where I feel trusted to do my job, I enjoy working with my colleagues and my role makes a difference to patients. The lowest scoring areas were enough staff to do my job, I have adequate materials/equipment to do my work, and management asks for my input in decision making. The recommendations from the survey were to improve workload management, recognition and development opportunities.

There were processes for providing all staff with the development they need. This included appraisal and career development conversations. However, the annual appraisals completion rates were mostly below 80%. Staff were supported to meet the requirements of professional revalidation where necessary. Staff were given some protected time for professional development and evaluation of their clinical work.

Staff told us the aggressive behaviour by patients towards them was now rare. However, should there be any issues the security team at the hospital promptly provided assistance.

The organisation had an employee assistance programme, which provided a counselling and advice service.

The leaders monitored and updated the workforce action plans to address any issues identified by surveys or feedback and ensured they reflected the workforces’ priorities.

We were told that the service had recently introduced a contract which stipulated they could be fined £50 if they cancelled a shift at the last minute. We discussed this with the leaders, who explained that this was brought into place because some staff had cancelled at short notice without an acceptable reason. If staff had contributory circumstances, then this would be taken into consideration.

At the previous assessment we found clinical governance procedures at the service were not sufficiently robust to ensure that a small minority of staff were suitable for their role. Staff performance was not sufficiently monitored; and the service was not up to date with clinical guardian audits at the site.

At this assessment we found the systems and processes for monitoring the governance of the organisation had improved and ensured continuous oversight of clinical and management performance. For example, the governance structure involved four sub-committees that reported to the CEO, the chair and council. The council meeting reviewed reports from the chair, CEO and three subcommittees. The quality and safety, risk and compliance, clinical audit and people and organisation development all reported to the integrated governance subcommittee. Board assurance framework was a standard agenda item.

Leaders who worked with the auditors told us the financial conduct authority (FCA) submissions were up to date, and the next being prepared for submission at the end of Oct 2025 for 2024/25.

The leadership team shared information with staff through newsletters, with specific ones for medicines management. Separate staff focus groups were also used to share information.

A weekly bulletin was sent every Friday to all staff and sessional workers from the CEO. In addition, a monthly quality and safety, and a quarterly medicines newsletter was sent to all staff. Meetings were scheduled online, in the evenings, and recorded so if staff were unable to attend, they could listen back.

The staff held various meetings to ensure the smooth running of the service. For example, morning and afternoon huddles, performance meetings, three monthly receptionist meetings, and focus groups for the initial assessment streaming clinical staff.

At the previous assessment we found patient engagement at the organisation was not well developed and there was no patient representative on the council. At this assessment, the leaders described a drive to increase patient feedback. There was now a patient representative on the council and there had been an uptake of patients completing comment cards.

The leaders and staff described how their relationship with local healthcare partners had improved. They met regularly to review any risks to the service and shared learning.

The leaders had mechanisms in place to feed back to the Integrated Care Board (ICB), whereby they were seeing patients in the UTC who should be seen in primary care and not urgent care.

The CEO engaged with local GP primary care networks and partnership boards.

The leaders met regularly with other partners within the urgent and emergency care framework in the local area.

Information was shared with patient’s GPs about their visits to the UTC.

There were staff council members in place from all levels of the organisation who could contribute to the strategic vision of the organisation. Staff were able to describe to us the systems in place to give feedback.

The organisation focused on continuous learning, innovation and improvement across the organisation.

The service had implemented active patient queue management which had made significant improvements to patient waiting times.

The organisation had achieved two accredited gold awards from the Urgent Health UK (UHUK), for the operational and quality and safety initiative.