St Andrew’s healthcare spent £1m on redundancy payments as staff numbers fell by 10 per cent last year, its latest accounts show.
The organisation, one of the country’s largest charities, also saw income fall by 8 per cent.
A critical inspection by care regulators contributed to the drop in income, according to St Andrew’s’ latest accounts, as well as Covid-19 and a strategic move away from providing in-patient services.
The charity, which runs services for people with complex mental health needs and is mainly funded through contracts with the NHS, raised £181m in the year ending in March 2022, down from £195.6m the year before.
Its annual accounts were published on Thursday with Companies House.
Its total spending also fell, from £206.8m to £191.9m.
The deficit for the year was £10.3m. The accounts say that St Andrew’s anticipates posting a smaller deficit next year and will then aim to achieve a financial surplus in 2023/24.
The number of staff at the charity dropped by more than 10 per cent, from 3,732 to 3,309, the report shows.
Total spending on salaries was down from £129.5m to £118m, including £1m on redundancy and termination payments in 2021/22.
Katie Fisher stepped down as the charity’s chief executive in October 2021. Vivienne McVey was named as Fisher’s permanent replacement this September.
Paul Burstow, chair of St Andrew’s board and a former government minister for care and mental health, is paid £50,000 a year for his work “in light of the time commitment required”, the accounts say.
Writing in his introduction to the accounts, Burstow says that the Care Quality Commission “inspection of our women’s services found serious quality failings and rated them as inadequate.
“There are no excuses and the charity has been working hard with our NHS partners to act on the CQC’s findings to create the conditions for sustained improvement in the experience of our patients.”
Later in the report, St Andrew’s says that the reduction in its income was partly a result of “admission restriction applied to some of our women’s wards following their CQC inspection in July 2021”. Those restrictions were all lifted before March 2022.
A St Andrew’s spokesperson said: “We believe more people with a mental health need should be treated in the community, which is why we’re focusing on out-of-hospital services to complement our in-patient services.
“As part of that programme of change, known as our transformation programme, we have reduced the number of inpatient beds as we look to provide more care in the community.
“This coupled with the financial impact from the Covid pandemic resulted in the fall in income during the 2021/22 period.”