Please find below comment from Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity SANE, on North Essex Partnership Trust pleading guilty to failures of care involving the deaths of 11 patients:

“We are saddened but not surprised that North Essex Partnership Trust has pleaded guilty to failures in the treatment of 11 patients who died while under their care.

“SANE has campaigned for a number of years over conditions at the Linden Centre, where little appeared to have been done to protect the welfare and safety of patients despite numerous reports and investigations from the Care Quality Commission, coroners and the police.

“We hope that other trusts will draw lessons from these preventable tragedies, so that no other hospital unit is allowed to ignore the warnings and continued serial failings.”