NHS Humber Health Partnership moved into special measures

NHS Humber Health Partnership (HHP) is being moved into special measures due to repeated and worsening failures. The partnership is now in Segment 5 of the National Oversight Framework (NOF), the lowest grade, indicating significant performance or governance challenges.

The partnership is responsible for five East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire hospitals, including those in Hull, Cottingham, Goole, Grimsby and Scunthorpe. Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust (NLG) and Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (HUTH) also fall under the HHP’s watch.

Unions representing the hospital workers have voiced severe criticisms of HHP leadership. Peta Clark, Royal College of Nursing head of operations, stated that within the partnership’s hospitals:

Staff morale is extremely low. Many feel undervalued, unheard, and under relentless pressure, despite working tirelessly to keep services running.

Likewise, Brendan Cafferty — Unison regional organiser — said:

Frontline NHS staff want to deliver the best patient care possible to the people of Hull and beyond. They’re proud to work for the organisation.

But they deserve a senior leadership team that supports them to do that.

NHS — ‘Very challenging financial climate’

HHP revealed that 13 serious, preventable accidents — ‘Never Events’ — had happened to patients in its care between June 2024 and August 2025. For context, only 19 Never Events have occurred in total since August 2023 — the creation of the partnership. As such, last year’s accidents mark a serious escalation of safety worries.

The partnership stated that:

Patient safety is an absolute priority for our partnership and must be central to every service and way of working.

We have launched a new Learning Improvement and Safety Academy to address safety issues, learn from incidents and educate and train our workforce better to prevent incidents from happening again.

On the subject of HHP’s relegation to Segment 5, the partnership said:

This reflects the scale of challenges which the organisation has been managing for some time. These issues are not new and include long-term challenges around access to care, including A&E and waits for surgery.

All NHS organisations and other public sector organisations, including ours, are working to deliver services in a very challenging financial climate.

That ‘challenging financial climate’ is, in part, a consequence of the government underfunding our NHS. In January 2026, the Canary reported that:

according to the British Medical Association (BMA), there has been a real terms cumulative underspend of £425bn in public health spending since 2009/10.

Following that, Labour has pledged a 2.2% increase in health spending until 2028/29. But that’s completely undermined by the governing party mandating 4% ‘efficiency savings’. That actually represents a 1.8% cut, putting staff working long hours under increased pressure.

Improvement team

However, the money that is going into the NHS isn’t necessarily being put to best use either.

Back in July 2025, Lyn Simpson was appointed as interim chief executive of the partnership – for an annual salary of almost £280,000. In August, HHP also brought in five other senior staff and an external contractor to form an ‘improvement team’.

The improvement team costs an average of £78,000 a month to run. However, the hospitals under HHP’s aegis haven’t yet shown consistent improvement.

For example, Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust climbed from 125th to 115th in the NHS league tables. Meanwhile, HUTH dropped seven places — from 123rd to 130th — between September and December.

These league tables measure access to services, patient safety and financial management. There are just 134 positions within the rankings.

Featured image via the Canary