The Edenfield Centre was the focus of allegations of abuse of vulnerable patients by staff, exposed in September 2022

The Edenfield Centre(Image: ABNM Photography)

The rating for mental health services at the scandal-hit former Edenfield Centre has been upgraded. But fears remain over staff shortages, according to inspectors. Mental health service bosses say they are ‘disappointed’.

The Prestwich site is home to Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust’s (GMMH) forensic inpatient and secure wards, for people involved in the criminal justice system or posing a high risk to others. The facility, formerly called the Edenfield Centre, was the focus of allegations of abuse of vulnerable patients by staff, exposed in late-2022.

The facility was quickly shut down to new patients as a host of internal, independent and criminal investigations began.

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When it reopened, the wards were hit with an ‘inadequate’ rating by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Another inspection of the centre in April 2024 again resulted in the wards being handed an inadequate rating, with a warning notice being issued to demand rapid improvements.

Now, following the latest inspection carried out in October 2025, the CQC has upgraded the trust’s rating of forensic inpatient and secure wards at the facility from inadequate to requires improvement.

Inspectors visited ‘all medium secure and low-secure male and female wards at the trust’s main site in Prestwich, previously known as the Edenfield Centre’. The centre was renamed the Riverside Centre in August.

In a report published today (February 4), the watchdog said: “We found that the trust had made improvements in some areas including the mitigation of environmental risks, the management of medicines, ward security procedures and governance systems.”

That included the majority of issues which led to the warning back in April 2024, inspectors said.

Staff ensured wards were safe and clean, and the management of fire and ligature risks had improved since the last inspection, continued the report. People and their carers were able to feed back to the trust on their experience of the service. Inspectors saw evidence of action being taken in response to this feedback.

Admissions to, and discharges from, the wards were managed well, with no issues affecting how quickly people were seen and treated throughout services, according to the watchdog.

Claims were made in a Panorama programme that patients at the Edenfield Centre were abused (Image: BBC)

But the watchdog found three breaches of regulations in relation to safe care and treatment, governance and staffing.

The report added: “Our assessment also found some continued areas of concern in relation to staffing, medicines management, the mitigation of individual patient risks and recordkeeping.

Specifically, the report told of how staffing shortfalls, particularly in relation to registered mental health nurses, were negatively impacting on people’s care.

The report reads: “Patient risks were not always well managed as there were gaps in the risk management plans and risk assessments were not always updated regularly. Some patients were not consistently receiving the physical health monitoring they needed and medicines were not always managed safely.

“There were staffing shortfalls on all the wards, which at times were negatively impacting on the quality of care and on patient and staff wellbeing. There were gaps in some of the ward management records including those relating to environmental risks, staff induction and the management of blanket restrictions.

“Care records did not always reflect full compliance with the Mental Health Act Code of Practice or the Mental Capacity Act.”

The watchdog’s remaining concerns have prompted backlash from trust bosses, who said that they are ‘disappointed’ wards did not get a further upgrade, to a rating of good.

Karen Howell OBE, the chief executive of Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust(Image: GMMH)

Karen Howell, chief executive of GMMH, said: “I am disappointed that the CQC did not upgrade the rating of our adult forensic services to ‘good’. The service improvements that colleagues have worked so hard on have been independently scrutinised by NHS England, Greater Manchester Integrated Care Partnership and Professor Oliver Shanley; we believe the quality of service provided can be evidenced as ‘good’.

“Nevertheless, this should not take away from the improved rating, including ‘good’ for three important domains, which is a real recognition of the hard work and dedication of our people and teams to drive improvements, in close collaboration with service users, carers and partners. Particular areas of improvement noted in the report include service user and carer engagement, patient flow, and patient safety, three vital elements in best practice care and treatment. “

In September 2022, shocking findings were revealed in a BBC Panorama documentary, showing patients being abused by staff in the trust’s Edenfield Centre, an inpatient mental health facility on the site of the former Prestwich Hospital.

Before that episode aired, the Manchester Evening News had already been reporting on the unsafe understaffing of those mental health services, and how trust failures had been cited in court as contributing to the tragic deaths of multiple people supposed to be under its care. GMMH has spent years being criticised by health watchdogs – the Care Quality Commission (CQC) – and has been the subject of numerous investigations by the Good Governance Institute, NHS England, and Greater Manchester Police.

Even before the Panorama programme, and increasingly after the episode aired, GMMH has promised improvements – and declared that some progress has been made. But the Manchester Evening News has often reported how many of the improvements the trust promised have ‘not been progressing to plan’ – and have even got worse in the intervening years, despite the trust being plunged into the highest levels of scrutiny by the NHS.

The chief executive continued in a statement issued to the Manchester Evening News.: “This [CQC report] demonstrates the real progress that has been made, and signifies one more tangible step forward in our improvement journey, following on from NHS England’s decision to approve the trust’s exit from the Recovery Support Programme in November 2025. Of course we know that there is more work to be done, and, together, will continue to build upon and sustain improvements made to deliver care that truly makes a difference.”