Introduction

Introduction

In recent years we have conducted an annual survey of NHS hospital, mental health, community and ambulance trusts, which has become the authoritative voice on the challenges facing the sector. Each year, the survey looks at the past year’s policy developments and provides commentary on the sector’s contributions.

This year, the survey includes some tracker questions from previous annual surveys, as well as a distinct focus on the current environment and the preparedness of the provider sector to meet pressing challenges related to the coronavirus pandemic and recovery of services in the months ahead. The survey asked for members’ views across a number of areas, such as COVID-19, Brexit, capacity to meet rising demand, winter pressures, quality of care, workforce priorities and system working.

The survey was open during August 2020 and was sent to all chairs and executive directors of trust boards.

This briefing sets out the results of the survey which reflects trusts’ focus on learning from the first wave of the pandemic and doing all they can to restore services safely. However, the results also highlight a strong sense among trust leaders that we are entering an unpredictable time - at its very worst a ‘perfect storm’ consisting of a second wave of COVID-19, seasonal winter pressures, workforce burnout, staff shortages, an unstable social care system, and the ongoing threat of a no-deal Brexit looming.  

Survey sample

• 199 executive directors responded to the survey. 53% of the respondents were chairs or chief executives, 12% were medical directors and 9% finance directors.
• The 199 responses came from 140 unique trusts, accounting for 65% of the provider sector.
• All regions and types of trust were represented in the responses.