A Nottinghamshire high-security psychiatric hospital has reduced its nursing vacancies but says its staffing is still ‘stretched’.

Nottinghamshire County Council’s Health Scrutiny Committee met on March 19 to discuss an update on Rampton Hospital, a high-security psychiatric hospital near Retford.

The hospital, run by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, was rated ‘inadequate’ in January 2024 after watchdog the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found several serious problems.

The CQC said at the time there were concerns over staffing numbers, staff supervision, training and medicine.

In January, the committee heard of “significant improvements” in the hospital, where six out of seven recommendations made by the CQC had been completed.

In the committee updates, it was noted the hospital has successfully cut its nursing vacancies from 18.5 wholetime equivalents to 3.5 in February 2025, with papers saying further recruitment is “ongoing”.

But the committee noted the hospital is still “stretched” as there has been an increase in admissions, and an increase i  patients needing to go out of site – such as on hospital visits – and therefore patients needed more observations.

Jan Sensier,  Executive Director of Partnerships and Strategy at the trust, said: “It has been a tricky time since Christmas, [there is] a number of out of grounds patients, patients having to go to the acute hospital for treatment.

“Every time they go we’re talking about an escort of about six staff- it only takes three or four patients to be out of grounds and you’ve really decimated your staffing.”

Councillor John Wilmott (Ind) said: “[This] really proves the point that mental health is seriously on the increase, in all areas, and it’s an issue that should concern everybody.

“[It] says staff are stretched , isn’t that a concern to you also?”

Trevor Gedeon, Associate Medical Director for the hospital, said: “What you tend to see when there are difficulties that occur in community services that has a knock-on effect all the way through up to high security.

“The people that are coming in to be admitted are facing greater challenges, are presenting with a greater need in terms of support, around managing risks, supporting people through distress or their physical health care.

“That does place us under pressure, it’s something we are skilled at and familiar with doing… we have no option to say ‘things are too difficult’ and refer up. In Rampton we have to meet that challenge and rise to that challenge and that’s something we do time and time again.”

Cllr David Martin (Ind) said: “It’s a real issue, to recruit staff and keep them, it’s a national service, there are only three hospitals in the country that do what you do- going forward, can you explain more about how you are recruiting more staff?”

Mr Gedeon said that it depends on the individual patient how many staff are required to be with them when they go off site for a separate acute hospital admission.

He said: “We’ve had to do quite a lot of work around that, we’re relatively remote and isolating – drawing on people willing to come to work and such challenging work, we’ve had various media campaigns, road show events to try and recruit, some of them, over the past couple months, have been quite successful.”

The hospital was visited by the CQC several times in February 2025- the results of these inspections have not yet been released.

The CQC has also removed the conditions of registration restrictions – meaning the hospital had to get permission from the CQC before admitting new patients – which was imposed following the ‘inadequate’ rating.

The trust, which runs several mental health facilities in Nottinghamshire, was also put under scrutiny when it emerged Nottingham attacks killer Valdo Calocane had been in its care several times.

Calocane was convicted of Manslaughter after fatally stabbing Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, along with Ian Coates, 65, in Nottingham in June 2023.