A PRIVATE medical service 'requires improvement' following a rated inspection from a health and social care regulator.

Collingwood Services, based at Minton House in Amesbury, was visited by the Care Quality Commission on May 18 for a rated inspection.

The care provider offers event medical services, training and patient transport and the last patient it transported to the hospital was on June 11.

Inspectors found that parts of the service require improvement and they highlighted how not all staff have completed "mandatory" training, with 39 per cent complying with training to identify potential terrorism activity.

Clinical staff completed training on recognising and responding to patients with mental health needs, learning disabilities, autism and dementia with varied compliance rates of 100 per cent, 63 per cent and 100 per cent respectively.

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At the time of the inspection, managers did not support staff to develop as only two of the six existing staff had received a yearly appraisal when it was due.

Of the 15 members of staff, five had been assessed by their primary NHS employers but had not had a driving assessment by managers of the service and two were "highlighted in red with no further information".

Inspectors said that this highlighted a risk of staff driving emergency vehicles without managers being directly aware of their competence.

Despite this, staff felt able to discuss any development needs with managers.

A spokesperson for the service said: "Staff do have annual appraisals and we uploaded evidence of this to the CQC portal and asked them to remove this non-factual statement from their report.

"One of the inspectors sat with me and went through half a dozen completed appraisals during the inspection."

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The overall rating of Collingwood Services stayed the same as its last inspection in October 2021, but safety was rated 'good' up from 'inadequate'.

Inspectors said the service controlled infection risk well and ambulances were serviced and safe.

The service did not have a structured way of reviewing staff's performance with event companies despite having long-term contracts.

Recruitment of new staff was not always completed in compliance with the law and current staff were not always informed of how the service was performing.

One of the references was completed by a staff member who knew the individual outside of the company.

Inspectors recommended that managers at Collingwood make staff aware of its policy of using translators for patients who do not speak English as their first language.

Collingwood Services said it would file a complaint against the CQC to challenge the rating.

The spokesperson added: "Our training is in line with Skills for Care (that the NHS follow) and we run a training centre which ensures our training is up to a high standard.

"Our training for our staff is about 30 different subjects and for a few staff to have not completed one module does certainly not match the wording in their report as we stated."

To read the full report visit cqc.org.uk/location/1-4595436272.