A NHS Trust that provides mental health and other specialist services in Cambridgeshire is facing a risk of not having enough experienced staff to deliver care.

The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT) said it had identified a risk around complying with a Care Quality Commission (CQC) regulation for staffing.

The Trust is responsible for the Cavell Centre in Peterborough and Fulbourn Hospital in Cambridge.

It also provides a number of NHS services within the community, including mental health and other specialist services.

The risk around being able to comply with the CQC regulation 18 was highlighted by Pri Pinnaduwa, a non-executive director at the Trust, at a board of directors meeting this week (July 31).

The CQC explains on its website that the intention of regulation 18 is to make sure that providers deploy enough “suitably qualified, competent and experienced staff”.

The CQC said: “To meet the regulation, providers must provide sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experienced staff to meet the needs of the people using the service at all times and the other regulatory requirements.

“Staff must receive the support, training, professional development, supervision and appraisals that are necessary for them to carry out their role and responsibilities.

“They should be supported to obtain further qualifications and provide evidence, where required, to the appropriate regulator to show that they meet the professional standards needed to continue to practise.”

Ms Pinnaduwa told the board that the Trust was facing an ‘overall challenge around resourcing’, and raised some of the impacts this was having.

She said: “[There is a] risk around complying with CQC regulation 18, which requires us as a Trust to have sufficiently qualified and experienced staff to deliver the services required.”

Ms Pinnaduwa added that the Trust was also facing a risk of having “insufficient resources” to deliver clinical mandatory training.

She also said the number of vacancies within the Trust was “also creating concerns in terms of staff wellbeing”.

Ms Pinnaduwa said the leadership were aware of this and were working on addressing the issues.

Papers presented to the meeting said the current vacancy rate at CPFT was still below its target.

The Trust gave a number of reasons for the problem, including “significant national shortages” of registered and unregistered staff, as well as the high cost of living in the Cambridgeshire area and challenges for people funding somewhere to live.

The papers did state that the staff turnover has been decreasing month by month and stood at 11.7 per cent in May, but added that this was still above the target of 10.5 per cent.

The report set out some of the work that had been undertaken to improve the rate of staff turnover at CPFT.

It said: “Successful recruitment campaigns and a reduction of staff leaving, however the challenges remain that affect this are: high cost of living around the Integrated Care System Area; accommodation challenges; hygiene factors i.e. access to equipment and general support; working conditions; demand and capacity challenges; visibility of wider leadership.”

The Trust said the majority of its staff had completed the core mandatory training, with compliance at 92.74 per cent in May, above the Trust target of 90 per cent.

However, it said the Trust was below target when it came to the number of staff who had completed the mandatory for role training.

The report said as of May 88.02 per cent of staff had completed this training, below the target of 90 per cent,

The Trust said “continued resourcing pressures” had impacted on staff engagement with training with the priority being given to delivering services when these pressures were being faced.

The CPFT said it was working on offering more flexible delivery of training going forwards.