But this report, commissioned by NHS England in June 2025, after the trust itself requested it, tells a different story.<\/p>\n
It highlighted a “dysfunctional” relationship between board leaders leading to a “divisive and toxic culture” which was “significantly affecting staff well-being”.<\/p>\n
Some of those staff were described as “fearful, anxious, and unable to speak openly”, while a staff survey carried out for the review revealed low morale with some describing the organisation as “toxic, anxious, divisive and fearful”.<\/p>\n
The report added that the focus on internal politics “is seen to detract from patient care, operational performance, and staff wellbeing”.<\/p>\n
Merseycare Foundation Trust itself asked NHS England to commission this report, which came out last November and was never made public.<\/p>\n
Eight months on from the original findings, the trust says much has changed, including some changes at board level.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson said they “acted swiftly to strengthen Board arrangements, enhance governance and decision-making and further embed the leadership behaviours and standards expected across the organisation”.<\/p>\n
They added: “Our senior leadership team is consistently engaging with staff through visible leadership, listening events, staff forums and open dialogue. This feedback is directly informing our improvement programme, with a continued focus on ensuring colleagues feel safe to speak up, know they are listened to and are treated with dignity and respect.”<\/p>\n
“Our focus remains on maintaining the highest standards of care, supporting our people and building an organisation that continues to learn, improve and deliver outstanding services.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But this report, commissioned by NHS England in June 2025, after the trust itself requested it, tells a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-714236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}