Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

Ratings - Well-led

• Well-led Our assessments of NHS trusts now focus on leadership. We no longer rate trusts overall for their safety, effectiveness and responsiveness or how caring they are. We do still publish those ratings for the services they provide.

  Requires improvement

Our view of the service

Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LYPFT) provide mental health, learning disability, and autism services to people across Leeds and York and beyond. They employ more than 3,000 staff and deliver care from 66 different sites, mainly in Leeds. They have around 407 inpatient beds and an annual turnover of around £240 million. At the time of the inspection the trust was in early discussions around a merger with a local community trust and already shared the same Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

We assessed all 8 of the quality statements in the well-led key question during our inspection of an NHS trust using our current framework.

We identified positive findings within 5 of the 8 quality statements and areas for improvement within 3 of the 8 quality statements.

The trust provides 11 services within our assessment service groups (ASGs).

• Community based mental health services for adults of working age
• Mental health crisis services and health-based places of safety
• Child and adolescent mental health wards
• Forensic inpatient and secure wards
• Acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units
• Wards for older people with mental health problems
• Long stay or rehabilitation wards for adults of working age
• Community based mental health services for older people
• Wards for people with a learning disability or autism
• Community learning disability services
• Specialist perinatal services

The trust also provides services including the National Inpatient Centre for Psychological Medicine (NICPM), specialist community mental health services for children and young people, and specialist supported living services.

The well-led inspection followed inspections of the following assessment service groups between 28 October 2025 and 11 March 2026. The inspection of the trust’s services was triggered by the age of the trust’s ratings.

The ASGs we inspected were:

• Wards for older people with mental health problems
• Child and adolescent mental health wards
• Acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units
• Long stay or rehabilitation wards for adults of working age

We undertook these inspections to ensure we had a thorough understanding of a range of services provided by the trust ahead of our well-led inspection.

Across services, we found assessments identified kind, caring and compassionate staff who understood patients and their needs well, as well as evidence of positive multidisciplinary team working and joint working with a range of external teams. However, we also found areas where there were clear opportunities to improve.

Of the four ASG inspections we undertook, three were rated requires improvement overall and one was rated good overall. The ASGs rated requires improvement were:

• Wards for older people with mental health problems
• Acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units
• Long stay or rehabilitation wards for adults of working age

Following the inspection of the long stay or rehabilitation wards for adults of working age ASG, we issued the trust with a Section 29A Warning Notice to drive rapid improvement in governance procedures. This was due to our identification of concerns in relation to staff mandatory training compliance, quality of patient care plans, cleanliness of the environment, fire safety, and governance oversight and management of concerns.

More broadly across the three ASGs rated requires improvement, we identified concerns in relation to staff mandatory training and governance oversight.

On wards for older people with mental health problems, we also identified concerns in relation to staff recording of patient observations and cleaning of medical equipment.

On the acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units we also identified concerns in relation to the safety of the environment, infection, prevention and control measures and assessment of patients’ physical health.

The ASG rated as good overall was:

• Child and adolescent mental health wards

We rated child and adolescent mental health wards good overall but identified concerns with staff mandatory training compliance, and physical health monitoring.

During this well-led inspection, we undertook a visit to the trust’s headquarters from 14 to 16 April 2026. We carried out interviews with the trust’s leadership team, including the chief executive, trust chair, medical director, chief operating officer, director of nursing and professions, quality and healthcare professions, chief financial officer, and director of people and organisational development.

During the assessment we also:

• conducted focus groups with; non-executive directors, trade union leads, staff network leads, governors, pharmacy staff, provider collaborative leads, and service user and carer groups.
• spoke with trust leads for equality diversity and inclusion, use of force and reducing restrictive practice, patient safety and safeguarding.
• observed a public and a private board meeting.
• observed a range of trust meetings and committees which included finance and performance, audit, quality, workforce, and Mental Health Act legislation.
• wrote to stakeholders including local authorities, NHS England, and the Integrated Care Board (ICB) to seek feedback about the trust.

During the trust’s well led inspection, we identified a breach of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014:

• The trust did not have effective systems to consistently assess, monitor, and drive improvement in the quality and safety of the services provided. Regulation 17, 1, 2 (a) (b) Good Governance.

People's experience of this service

Feedback from people using services and their families was largely positive.

The trust gathered feedback through formal methods, including the NHS ‘Have Your Say’ (previously known as the Friends and Family Test), NHS Inpatient and Community survey, the annual CQC Community Mental Health Survey, and complaints, as well as more informal methods including ward-based community meetings.

In February 2026, 52 people completed the NHS Have Your Say form. Most respondents reported a positive experience, with 75% of respondents rating their care as very good or good. Three respondents (approximately 6%) rated their experience as poor or very poor, while the remainder felt their experience was neither good nor poor.

During our ASG inspections, we visited 15 wards and spoke with 56 people using services and 21 carers or family members.

Feedback from acute wards and psychiatric intensive care units (PICU) was mixed. Most patients felt supported and told us they were involved in decisions about their care and treatment. Most patients told us staff treated them well, but some told us there were not enough staff available to respond to their needs in a timely manner. Most carers felt staff treated patients with kindness, dignity, respect & compassion but some carers felt staff could spend more therapeutic time with patients.

On child and adolescent mental health wards (CAMHS), young people were positive about the service, and they thought staff were kind and helpful and that they could speak to them when they needed to. However, they did raise concerns about difficulties engaging with bank and agency staff. Carers also shared concerns that young people did not always feel safe when there were higher numbers of agency staff working, who did not know young people well.

Feedback from rehabilitation wards was generally positive. Patients told us that staff were respectful, caring and friendly and treated them with kindness. Some patients raised concerns about access to an outdoor space on a ward.

On wards for older people, patients told us staff were kind and considerate and treated them with respect. A small number of patients said response times from staff at night were sometimes slower. The food and menu received mixed comments. Carers were very complimentary about the staff and the work they carried out. Carers told us they were made to feel welcome when they visited, but that the parking at the hospital was problematic for them.

The annual Community Mental Health survey, conducted by CQC, assesses the experiences of people aged 16+ using NHS community mental health services in England. The 2025 survey, published 31 March 2026, received 256 responses from people at LYPFT. The survey asked people to answer questions about different aspects of their care and treatment and based on their responses, each NHS trust was given a score out of 10 for each question (the higher the score the better). LYPFT scored ‘about the same’ or ‘better than expected’ overall for all question areas. Key strengths (scoring ‘much better than expected’) were ‘knowing who to contact’ and ‘medication discussions’.

The trust service user and carer network (SUN) is a user-led forum co-chaired by lived experience partners who set their own agenda. Meetings are held monthly and alternate between an online videoconference and face-to-face to encourage and support attendance. The trust Patient Experience team supports SUN to facilitate meetings such as by inviting executives to answer questions. We observed a meeting attended by the trust Chair who had invited questions via email prior to the meeting to enable them to answer these in an informed manner. Attendees were able to ask additional questions which were responded to appropriately.

The trust employed a Lived Experience Lead whose role it was to ensure service user and carer involvement and co-production as part of its’ Culture of Care programme. Changes as a result of co-production were evident, including amendments to staff training packages. The trust placed clear importance on service user and carer involvement and had a policy in place to support and reimburse those who got involved.