A mental health trust claims that having to refocus its teams due to an ongoing inquiry into 2,000 deaths connected to the service is hampering its efforts to improve care.

EPUT was rated 'Requires Improvement following an unannounced Care Quality Commission (CQC) visit to its mental health ward in Colchester in November 2025, the report for which was released last week.

EPUT had time to address issues identified during a prior CQC visit, but it was found that actions to improve care had not gone far enough, and in some instances, no changes had been made at all.

EPUT says this was largely because the trust had "refocused" its compliance team to support the work around the Lampard Inquiry – an independent statutory inquiry investigating around 2,000 deaths of mental health inpatients in Essex between 2000 and 2023.

In particular, the teams had been statutorily compelled to respond to a large "Rule 9" request for specific documentation between the Autumn of last year and January 2026.

An EPUT board meeting report said: "The compounding factor in this instance is the fact that, in the autumn of last year to January 2026, we refocused our compliance team to support a complex and large in scope Rule 9 issued from the Lampard Inquiry, and as such the compliance review of actions completed did not happen prior to the CQC inspection being undertaken."

During the CQC visit, inspectors found there were "significant shortfalls" in safeguarding, adding that EPUT "did not concentrate on improving people's lives or protecting their right to live in safety, free from bullying, harassment, abuse, discrimination, avoidable harm and neglect. They did not share concerns quickly and appropriately".

The longrunning Lampard enquiry is looking into 2,000 deaths and is funded by the health trust it is investigating.

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Melanie Leahy, whose son Matthew died aged 20 while in the care of EPUT in 2012, said: "The Lampard Inquiry did not create these failings. It exists because families spent years raising concerns about them.

"To suggest that scrutiny is the problem, when the CQC is still identifying serious failures in safeguarding, governance and organisational learning, is deeply troubling. The Inquiry is not the cause of these issues. It is exposing them."

Ann Sheridan, Executive Chief Nurse of EPUT, said: "As the inquiry progresses there will be many accounts of people who were much loved and missed over the past 24 years and I want to say how sorry I am for their loss.

"The scale and complexity of identifying information across a 24-year period, and two predecessor organisations, became increasingly clear in the latter part of 2025. We have therefore put in place additional resource to ensure that we can continue to balance the needs of serving the Inquiry with our focus on delivering care to the 100,000 people who use our services at any point in time".