A MENTAL health trust’s rehabilitation service was closed after inspectors raised “serious” concerns over poor hygiene and staff shortages.

Inspectors from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) highlighted problems at Hanover Crescent in Brighton while carrying out a routine check in January on all services provided by Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

They said the problems had created an unsafe environment at Hanover Crescent and asked for it to be closed. A report on the CQC’s inspection published today says that overall the trust requires improvement.

The report said although the trust mostly provided good or outstanding care overall and community-based services were good, improvements were needed for services to be consistently safe, effective, responsive and well-led.

Some areas of care in learning disability and older people’s inpatient services were considered inadequate and in need of urgent attention to being them up to standard.

Bed shortages meant adults and elderly patients had to travel some distance to get a place on a ward.

Concerns were raised about the standard of cleaning on some wards. In others women were only able to get to bathroom and toilet facilities by passing through male areas.

Inspectors found some bathrooms, used by children and teenagers, included features which could be used by people contemplating suicide.

There were also significant delays in accessing services for children and adolescent with waiting times for routine treatments taking up to a year.

The trust provides NHS mental health, learning disability, substance misuse and prison healthcare services across Sussex.

CQC deputy chief inspector of hospitals Paul Lelliott said he was concerned the trust had no plan in place to tackle the relatively high rate of suicide in Sussex.

The CQC said there were “encouraging” signs of improvement in the four months since the inspection and a team would return in due course.

Trust chief executive Colm Donaghy said: “The CQC highlights services where the level of caring is outstanding and where staff are compassionate, kind and motivated to go the extra mile for the people they serve. Our challenge is to achieve this consistently across all our services.

"We also need to be much better at getting the basics right on issues like staff training and learning from incidents.

“We’ve addressed areas where the inspection team raised concerns about the patient environment, improved the way we deliver staff training and have been talking with patients and staff about.”