Strategy
St Andrew's Healthcare is a registered charity that was founded in 1838 with a hospital in Northampton to provide humane care to the mentally ill. The charity is still headquartered in Northampton, but also now has locations in Nottinghamshire, Essex and Birmingham. It is one of the leading organisations that provides in-patient care for people with mental health issues referred by the NHS and employs more than 4,000 people.
It provides care across a number of services, including Men’s Mental Health, Women’s Mental Health, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), Neuropsychiatry, Autistic Spectrum Disorder and Learning Disability, with the majority (more than 90%) of our 600 patients referred to the charity via the NHS.
Recent years have seen the charity receive a number of highly critical reports from the CQC following inspections. In March 2026 after several critical CQC reports and ongoing police investigations, NHS England ordered that almost 300 patients needed to be moved from the charity's Northampton hospital due to safety concerns (see Issues section).
In June 2026, the Charity Commission began a statutory inquiry into St Andrew's due to ongoing safeguarding and financial concerns. The inquiry will examine the extent to which the trustees are complying or have complied with their legal duties in respect of the administration, governance and management of the charity.
Financials
St Andrew's Healthcare is registered charity number 1104951. For the financial year ending 31 March 2025 the charity had gross income of £235.6 million, up from £217.8 million in 2024, and expenditure of £233.7 million in 2025, up from £214.1 million in 2024. Funding from NHS contracts is listed as charitable activities and amounted to £204.8m (2024: £191.8m).
Contracts
St Andrew's Healthcare receives over 90% of its patients via referral from the NHS.
Concerns
Safety and care concerns
The CQC has issued a number of very critical reports on the organisation, its management, staff, governance, and safety and quality of care over recent years.
In March 2026, NHS England asked for nearly 300 patients to be moved from St Andrew’s Healthcare' hospital in Northampton due to safety concerns for the patients.
The letter from NHS England, published online noted that the move was needed because:
“we still do not have adequate assurance that patient safety is improving at a rate it needs to and our concerns about patient safety remain; we therefore must act now to ensure patients receive the care and treatment they deserve.”
Soon after the letter was received Vivienne McVey, who had been in charge of the hospital since 2022, emailed staff saying that she is to retire and ‘let someone else continue the work to transform St Andrews’.
“An independent team of mental health, learning disability and autism clinicians”, has been sent in to the hospital according to the letter from NHS England, and they have started work on the Northampton site “to provide 24/7 enhanced oversight and assurance.”
The hospital was placed in special measures by the CQC in December 2025, which included NHS England asking the provider to review its executive team and provide regular reports on its financial situation. This move comes at the end of many months of issues, however.
The CQC reports contained evidence of widespread assault by staff of patients, which led to the ongoing police investigation. A number of employees have been sacked. In February, the BBC reported that 15 staff members had been arrested since October 2024 following allegations of rape, ill-treatment and neglect.
In May 2025 a highly critical report was published by the CQC on St Andrew's Northampton hospital based on an unannounced inspection in November 2024. In July 2025, the CQC took urgent enforcement action of restricting new admissions at St Andrew's Healthcare Northampton. The CQC also imposed a number of conditions on St Andrew's Healthcare registration in November 2025 to require the provider to make improvements in the safety and quality of care provided relating to; staffing, ward environments, blanket restrictions, risk management, observations, incident management, governance and systems and processes.
The hospital was downgraded to "inadequate" after "unacceptable" failings were identified, and it was put into special measures. The inspection was prompted by concerns over patient safety and staffing levels.
In the May 2025 report inspectors found that patients and staff "did not always feel safe on the wards". Concerns were also raised about blanket restrictions on access to food and drink, maintenance issues such as a lack of hot water, and serious allegations of abuse. Nineteen allegations of abuse by staff had been made by patients in the six months prior to the visit. The report also noted the service had a high level of vacancies and a high use of non-permanent staff. The hospital will now require an action plan.
In November 2021, the CQC criticised the charity’s adult ward in a hospital in Northampton, where it was claimed staff fell asleep during work. The CQC has described the facility as unsafe and restricted admissions. The provider is now banned from admitting new patients to its female-only forensic and rehabilitation units, plus all of its learning disability wards, without the CQC’s permission. Inspectors visited in July and August and expressed concerns about staffing levels, patient observations, and workforce culture.
In June 2019, its Northampton hospital was rated “inadequate” by the CQC. The watchdog had found that adolescents were kept in unsafe seclusion rooms for excessive amounts of time and without beds, blankets or pillows. It was reported that some patients had been in seclusion for years and earlier in 2019 the Victoria Derbyshire programme was given footage of a teenager reaching their arm through a door hatch to enable contact with their parents during a visit to the hospital.
In January 2020, the CQC published a highly critical report on St Andrew’s Healthcare and rated the organisation “requires improvement”. The report contained a number of concerns, including that in previous inspections records had been falsified for the CQC thus covering up allegations of poor care and abusive behaviour.
Inspectors have highlighted a series of failings at an independent provider, including treatment of a patient and children being dragged across the floor. In February 2020, the organisation’s adolescent mental health unit in Northampton was rated “inadequate” for the second time in a year, following a litany of failings found by the CQC.
The report stated: “Staff did not always use approved restraint techniques, which resulted in staff dragging patients along the floor or physically injuring patients during restraint. Senior staff told us they observed CCTV footage of these incidents and were concerned that other staff present had not acted to intervene.”
