WIREDGOV

Good leadership has a significant impact on staff morale and patient experiences of care. Our guidance on how we will assess the well-led key question aims to support NHS trusts to understand what good leadership looks like. Good leadership enables better care for patients, and a more sustainable health and care service.

We have now published our full guidance to support our assessments of the well-led key question for NHS trusts. This has been developed in collaboration with NHS England.

What is happening and when?

We continue to carry out trust-level assessments of the well-led key question in response to regulatory risk. We are also planning to work with some providers from later this month to enable them to share their experiences of this approach before wider roll out.

We will keep providers updated on further key dates via our bulletins and email.

How we will assess and rate the well-led key question at trust level for NHS trusts

Using the 8 quality statements under the well-led key question will ensure our assessments have a strong focus on:

• leadership
• culture
• governance.

We are not making changes to how we rate at service level (or location level for acute trusts).

Scope of the first NHS trust-level assessments

The first trust-level assessments under the single assessment framework will be based on an assessment of the 8 quality statements under the well-led key question.

We are taking this approach because it will give us a starting point and enable us to issue a first rating based on a full assessment at the trust level.

When we award our first new ratings under the new approach we will be confident that:

• they are the right judgements.
• we have considered the full scope of the assessment of both leadership and wider organisational performance.
• this approach reflects previous challenges over several years in updating overall trust ratings.
• we can address the complexity of assessing organisational leadership, culture and management by using the new quality statements under the well-led key question.

Find out more about the scope and approach to well-led assessment for NHS trusts: Our new assessment approach: Assessing the well-led key question for NHS trusts

Guidance for NHS trusts and foundation trusts: assessing the well-led key question