Hospitals trust now worst in the country
UNDER-PERFORMING: Hull Royal Infirmary
EXCLUSIVE by Rick Lyon
The region’s hospitals trust is now officially the worst performing in the country.
Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (HUTH), which manages Hull Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill Hospital, has fallen to the bottom of NHS England’s national performance league table.
NHS England – the executive body responsible for leading and overseeing the NHS – ranks health trusts against a range of performance criteria, including patient safety, access to services and finances.
HUTH is ranked 134 out of 134 trusts after falling four places since the quarterly Acute Trust League Table was last published. It had previously dropped from 123 in September to 130 in December last year.
The table forms part of NHS England’s Oversight Framework (NOF), which it describes as “a consistent and transparent approach to assessing NHS trusts, ensuring public accountability for performance”.
Under the framework, trusts are graded from a ‘segment rating’ of 1, which is judged to be “high performance”, to 5, which is classed as “significant concerns”.
HUTH had been segment 4 but has been informed it is being reclassified as segment 5, the equivalent of “special measures”.
The trust is currently rated as ‘Requires Improvement’ by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) – the independent regulator of health and social care in England.
Staff have also voiced concerns about the number of ‘Never Events’ – deemed so serious, they should never happen – occurring at the region’s hospitals.
NHS England describes Never Events as “serious, preventable patient safety incidents that should not occur if healthcare providers have implemented existing national guidance or safety recommendations”.
The latest published data shows there were six Never Events at HUTH between April 2025 and January 2026.
SCRUTINY: Lyn Simpson
The failings come despite interim CEO Lyn Simpson, who joined in July 2025 on a reported salary of £279,162, bringing in a six-strong ‘improvement team’.
The Hull Story exclusively revealed last month that the cost of the team between August 2025 and January 2026 was more than £390,000 in salaries and expenses.
HUTH is part of the wider NHS Humber Health Partnership (HHP) group, which includes Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust (NLaG).
The partnership has a cost savings target in excess of £100m this year, which has resulted in significant financial constraints being imposed on most departments.
These include a freeze on recruitment for all non-clinical roles, even when there are vacancies. Teams also have to apply to senior management to buy basic items such as pens and pads of paper.
A spokeswoman for HUTH said: “Our current position in the NOF league table reflects the scale of challenges which the organisation has been managing for some time. These issues are not new. Since the summer, we have taken a deliberate decision to surface those challenges openly through the development of our clinically-led improvement plan.
“That plan, shaped by frontline clinicians and teams, sets out clear actions to strengthen patient safety, stabilise services and improve reliability of care.
“Many changes are already under way including a major improvement programme to reduce waiting times for breast cancer treatment to the introduction of a seven-day service to help patients with clots on their brains.
“We’re also changing ways of working – adapting medical rotas to provide 24/7 cover, introducing a new digital appointment system empowering patients to book and cancel appointments and offering people new services to support their recovery at home instead of them spending too long in hospital.
“The additional oversight and enforcement undertakings that are linked to our position provide a structured framework to support delivery of that work, including strengthening leadership, governance and organisational arrangements across the partnership.”
You can see the national league table here.