Failings in mental health care need concrete steps

Our reporting of the failings of the Huntercombe Hospital in Maidenhead, renamed Taplow Manor, and finally closed in 2023, should act as a warning of what can happen in the mental healthcare sector.

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Most mental healthcare in Britain is good and compassionate, where it is available. The biggest problem is long waiting lists, especially for young people, and especially at a time when mental illness is becoming more common among young people for reasons that are not well understood, according to the The Independent.

But The Independent's campaigning journalism, led by our award-winning reporter Rebecca Thomas, has revealed the dangers of institutions such as Huntercombe when they fail to meet the standards that every patient has a right to expect. Huntercombe had a history of poor care, which its owners repeatedly insisted to the authorities they were putting right. It should have been closed a long time before it finally shut its doors.

In our report today, Philip King, a former Huntercombe Group executive, speaking out for the first time, says that the hospital should have been closed years before it was.