Rollesby Ward at the Hellesdon Hospital NSFT site in Norwich will reopen as a single-sex female psychiatric ICU, once the trust has finished recruitment - Credit: Joel Adams

A psychiatric hospital ward closed since May 2021 will reopen as a single-sex unit for severely unwell female patients, following a decision by councillors.

Rollesby ward at Hellesdon Hospital in Norwich, run by the region's struggling mental health trust Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust (NSFT), will become a single-sex Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) housing 10 female patients when it eventually reopens.

The Trust's 10-bed PICU at Ipswich Hospital in Suffolk, Lark Ward, will become a single-sex male ward.

However Rollesby, where £700,000 refurbishments were completed five months ago, still doesn't have a reopening date due to delays recruiting senior staff.

Meanwhile the Trust continues to pay to send ICU patients to out-of-area hospitals hundreds of miles away from their families where, according to deputy chief executive Cath Byford, their care may not be as tailored and they are not "tied in to the local system".

Today (THU) the county council's Health Oversight and Scrutiny Committee approved the Trust's plan to reopen the ward as single-sex, but voiced concerns over insufficient public consultation and whether the plan would lead to empty beds.

Independent children's advocate Anne Humphreys told the committee there was "almost no voice from patients or carers" in the Trust's submission and that the consultation was a limited afterthought.

NSFT Deputy CEO Cath Byford told the Norfolk County Council Health Scrutiny and Oversight Committee the decision would allow the Trust to proceed with recruitment - Credit: Norfolk County Council

Ms Byford acknowledged "maybe some of this was done a bit in the wrong order" and promised the Trust would "pull our socks up at engaging with service users and their carers."

But, she said, the move to two single-sex wards was the right one, and would allow the Trust to proceed with recruitment delayed because putative staff have not been sure of the environment in which they'll be working.

The Trust told the EDP it still has not filled the roles of psychologist, matron, and several assistant practitioner and nursing roles.

But 20 clinical support workers, two assistant practitioners and five nurses have been recruited and are working on other wards until Rollesby reopens.

NSFT was rated Inadequate once again by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in April, following a visit which found severe failings including unsafe staffing levels, insufficiently trained staff, failure to remove ligature points, out of date risk assessments, failure to report or learn from incidents, poor maintenance of patient records, and ineffective management of medicines.