The Northern Echo manifesto is asking party leaders to commit to a statutory public inquiry into a scandal-hit North East mental health trust.

Patients and bereaved families have spent years insisting that care at Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys Mental Health Trust (TEWV) is “not fit for purpose.”

A period of intense scrutiny at TEWV has seen it graded ‘requiring improvement’, a raft of critical inquests into patient deaths, and a prosecution by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

In the past two years, reports from healthcare watchdogs have flagged problems in the Trust that “require improvement”, or areas where services are “inadequate”.

Issues highlighted at the trust range from safeguarding practices and incident reports, to lengthy waitlists and overuse of patient restraint.

Only weeks ago, an inquest jury at Crook Coroners’ Court ruled that Darlington man Matthew Gale died after he was “neglected” whilst an inpatient at a TEWV hospital in 2023.

And earlier this year, the Trust was fined £200k after pleading guilty to unsafe care in connection with the deaths of two patients, 17-year-old Christie Harnett, and Patient X, a young mum who cannot be named for legal reasons.

The trust admitted that it failed to adequately assess patients' self-harm and suicide risk, or implement effective ways to reduce those risks.

Recently, The Northern Echo sent an open letter to the Prime Minister on behalf of the bereaved families left in the wake of tragedies at TEWV.

The 11 families who signed the letter, including the parents of teenagers Christie Harnett and Emily Moore, have campaigned relentlessly for change in mental health care, and believe that substandard care persists at TEWV.

Grieving relatives have worried that “lessons aren’t being learned” at the Trust, and have continuing concerns about patient safety both in and out of TEWV's hospitals.

They believe that their loved ones “deserve a public inquiry at the very least”.

There is already precedent for this kind of action - currently, a first-of-its-kind public inquiry is ongoing into inpatient mental health care in Essex, after the deaths of nearly 2,000 patients.

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Those lobbying for a statutory public inquiry in the North East believe it is the only way forward, taking a look at deaths and serious incidents collectively to improve patient safety in hospitals.

Responding to calls for an inquiry, a Trust spokesperson previously said: "As an NHS trust, we have no role or influence on public inquiries. These are a matter for government. We fully accept the need for accountability and that currently comes in many forms, including regular inspections from the Care Quality Commission.

"The government has already decided against a specific public inquiry into this trust. Should that change for any reason, we will obviously co-operate."