- SERVICE PROVIDER
Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust
This is an organisation that runs the health and social care services we inspect
Assessment report published 12 June 2026
Contents
Ratings - Community-based mental health services for adults of working age
Our view of the service
Assessment date: 9, 10, 11 December 2025
We carried out a focused assessment of the community-based mental health services for adults of working age provided by Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust (formerly known as Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust (KMPT). We were required to follow up on actions taken by the trust following CQC issuing a warning notice to them in March 2025.
During the assessment, we visited 3 sites The Beacon, Laurel House and Ash Eton.
Overall, safe improved from inadequate to requires improvement, while effective and well-led remained requires improvement. This meant the service had made some improvements, but patients were at risk of coming to harm because some processes were not yet being consistently used or fully embedded. We found the trust to be compliant with the warning notice that we served to the trust in March 2025, however further improvements were required. As a result of this we issued the trust with an action plan request to address the breaches of regulation identified following the December 2025 inspection.
Safety had improved, with better oversight in some areas. Waiting lists were being managed more effectively in most places, supported by patient tracking meetings and reviews that helped escalate urgent cases. The trust had also strengthened physical health monitoring by carrying out regular clinical audit, sharing weekly compliance information on cardiometabolic checks with clinical leads, and reviewing this in regular meetings (including senior review) so teams could follow up missed checks and target support where compliance was low.
However, at this assessment we found 2 breaches of regulation. We identified breaches of Regulation 12 (safe care and treatment), and Regulation 17 (good governance).
Core safety processes were still not consistent across all locations. For example, at the South Kent Coast team, some records we reviewed did not show future appointments booked in line with local guidance. This meant that patients were still not being contacted and monitored consistently in line with trust policy across all teams. The completion of risk assessments and risk management also remained inconsistent, with the newer CRAM (clinical risk assessment and management) approach to managing risk was still being rolled out. The new risk assessment process was not used consistently across the services we visited, and some care records were missing up-to-date care plans and risk documentation in the expected format. Staff could navigate records and knew the patients they supported, but risk information was often held within progress notes and was time consuming to access because risk events were not consistently recorded in event logs. This increased the risk of staff missing key information about a patient and their care needs.
The service had a referral and triage process in place, with regular referral meetings attended by a multidisciplinary team, and staff understood how to escalate risk concerns. Staff also recognised the importance of supporting carers and signposting them to assessment and support where consent was given. The introduction of dashboards (including Power BI) supported oversight of waiting lists and highlighted patients with no contact, but this was not embedded consistently across all locations at the time of the assessment.
Governance arrangements were in place but were not yet effective at sustaining the improvements required. The quality of care records, risk assessments, waiting list oversight and caseload management all required further improvements. Staffing had improved overall, but the service was still mid-way through implementing a staffing model change, with further reviews and completion work still underway. We identified the positive progress the trust had made in strengthening oversight since our last inspection. For example, multidisciplinary working was described as a strength, and the RED (risk evaluation and decision) board approach was reported as consolidated and used consistently across locations.