Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust: Pay, CQC Rating & Working There

What Derbyshire Healthcare actually runs today

Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust provides mental health, learning disability and autism services, drug and alcohol recovery services, and some children's community health services across Derbyshire and Derby city — a population of around one million, with the trust noting more than 70 languages spoken across the communities it serves. Reported staff numbers are in the region of 3,000 (we couldn't independently confirm a precise current figure to a standard we're comfortable stating as fact — check the trust's latest annual report for the exact number). It became an NHS foundation trust in February 2011, having previously operated as Derbyshire Mental Health Services NHS Trust.

A planned merger with the separate Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Foundation Trust was explored from 2016 but abandoned in 2017, with both trusts agreeing to continue working closely together as independent organisations rather than merge — worth knowing since some directories still reference the abandoned merger plan. As of September 2026, Derbyshire Healthcare remains independent under its current name and CQC provider code (RXM). Mental health nursing here progresses through exactly the same Agenda for Change bands as any other field of nursing, and allied health professionals working in mental health settings are covered in our AHP guide.

Radbourne, Derwent and other named sites

Per the CQC's own current location listing for the trust, active inpatient and clinical sites include:

• Radbourne Unit — on the Royal Derby Hospital site, Uttoxeter Road, Derby, providing acute mental health inpatient care for the Derby side of the trust's catchment.
• Derwent Unit — Chesterfield Road, Calow, near Chesterfield, providing inpatient mental health care for the North Derbyshire/Chesterfield side of the catchment.
• Bluebell at Walton Hospital — Whitecotes Lane, Chesterfield, a further named inpatient site.
• Kingsway site, Derby — the trust's headquarters, and historically associated with forensic and rehabilitation inpatient provision; the trust runs a forensic inpatient/secure ward service rated Good by the CQC (May 2025), though always check the trust's current site list for exactly where that service is based today.

Note that the previously-used Hartington Unit at Chesterfield Royal Hospital is listed by the CQC as an archived location, so if you've seen it referenced in older material, check current job adverts for the live site name rather than assuming it's still operating under that name.

CQC rating: Good across the board, with two Outstanding services

Derbyshire Healthcare's overall CQC rating is Good, last updated 2 November 2023, with the CQC specifically noting "significant improvements in the ethos, culture and services" at that inspection. What's genuinely notable, and worth stating plainly rather than downplaying, is how consistent this is across the trust's individual services — unusual for a mental health trust of this size.

Rated Good at their most recent inspections: community-based mental health services for adults of working age (15 July 2025), mental health crisis services and health-based places of safety (15 July 2025), acute wards for adults of working age and PICU (27 December 2024), long-stay/rehabilitation wards (10 December 2025), forensic inpatient/secure wards (28 May 2025), wards for older people with mental health problems (25 March 2025), community-based mental health services for older people (28 September 2018), and community mental health services for people with learning disabilities or autism (6 March 2020). Rated Outstanding: community health services for children, young people and families (6 March 2020), and specialist community mental health services for children and young people (29 September 2016).

NHS Staff Survey: consistently above average

In the 2024 NHS Staff Survey, Derbyshire Healthcare recorded 2,081 responses at a 63.74% response rate — well above its comparator group's (mental health, learning disability and community trusts) average of 54.12% for that year. This isn't a one-off: the trust's response rate has been above its comparator average in every year from 2020 (60.07% vs a 49.31% average) through 2024, a genuinely consistent multi-year pattern of high staff engagement with the survey process.

The substantive 2024 People Promise element scores are equally strong: "we are compassionate and inclusive" 7.69 (average 7.55); "we are recognised and rewarded" 6.52 (average 6.35); "we each have a voice that counts" 7.00 (average 6.94); "we are safe and healthy" 6.53 (average 6.40); "we are always learning" 5.93 (exactly the 5.93 average); "we work flexibly" 7.10 (average 6.83); "we are a team" 7.32 (average 7.15); Staff Engagement 7.07 (exactly the 7.07 average); and Morale 6.34 (average 6.20). Every single measure sits at or above the comparator average — a genuinely strong result across the board, not just on one or two headline figures.

Specialist services

Beyond core adult, older adult and children's mental health services, Derbyshire Healthcare runs several services worth knowing about for career planning:

• Centre for Self-harm and Suicide Prevention Research — a dedicated in-house research centre focused specifically on self-harm and suicide prevention, a genuinely distinctive academic and clinical specialism for a trust of this size.
• Eating disorder service — specialist assessment and treatment for adults with eating disorders.
• Adult neurodevelopmental services — autism and ADHD assessment for adults.
• Forensic inpatient/secure wards — rated Good at the most recent inspection (May 2025), supporting people with mental health needs who have a criminal justice history.
• Gambling harms service — specialist support for gambling-related harm, a less commonly offered service across the mental health trust sector.
• Drug and alcohol recovery services — substance misuse treatment and recovery support.

A genuinely positive picture, checked honestly

Unlike several other trusts covered on this site, we didn't find a comparably serious, current regulatory enforcement action, safeguarding breach, or well-documented safety scandal attached to Derbyshire Healthcare at the time of writing. That's a real finding in itself, arrived at by checking the same sources — the CQC's own provider page, the trust's own published material, and the primary NHS Staff Survey benchmark report — with the same level of scrutiny applied to every trust on this site, not an absence of looking. No NHS trust is entirely without pressures, and readers should still check the CQC's current position and the trust's own most recent board papers before accepting a specific role, particularly since ratings and circumstances can change between inspections. But on the evidence available, this is a genuinely stronger and more consistent picture than most comparable mental health trusts.

Pay, banding and HCAS (there isn't any)

Pay at Derbyshire Healthcare runs on the same national Agenda for Change bands as any NHS trust, Band 2 through Band 9, plus medical and dental scales for psychiatrists. Derbyshire and Derby city sit well outside both the London HCAS zones and the fringe zone covering parts of Surrey, Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent and Berkshire nearest the London border, so no High Cost Area Supplement applies to any post here — pay is exactly the standard national band rate. Use the NHS Pay Calculator to see your own figure.

Derbyshire Healthcare vs East London NHS Foundation Trust

Derbyshire Healthcare and East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT) are both genuinely strong performers on the evidence available, but they represent different profiles worth comparing directly rather than assuming one style of "good" fits every candidate.

Neither trust is simply "better" — ELFT's Outstanding rating and internationally-recognised quality improvement programme sit at a different tier of external recognition, while Derbyshire Healthcare's across-the-board Good-or-better rating on every individual service, achieved outside London with no HCAS complication, is its own genuinely strong and unusually consistent record. See our East London NHS Foundation Trust page for that trust's figures in full, and use the NHS Trust Comparison Tool below to weigh either against a trust currently navigating more serious concerns, such as Greater Manchester Mental Health.

Why someone might want to join Derbyshire Healthcare

Pulling together everything above, a few things stand out as genuine, verifiable reasons to consider Derbyshire Healthcare specifically:

• An unusually consistent CQC record — every individual service currently rated Good or Outstanding, rather than a trust with one headline strength and several weaker areas.
• Two Outstanding-rated children's services — community health services for children and families, and specialist community CAMHS, both carry this genuinely rare rating.
• A dedicated self-harm and suicide prevention research centre — a distinctive academic and clinical specialism, of particular interest to staff wanting research-linked experience alongside frontline clinical work.
• Consistently above-average staff survey engagement — both in participation and in substantive scores, every year since 2020, a genuinely rare multi-year pattern.
• No HCAS complication — a single, simple national pay position with no location-based supplement calculation to work through.

Tools for working out your own numbers

Trust name and job title alone won't tell you what a specific Derbyshire Healthcare role is actually worth, or how it measures up against another trust's offer — these three tools do that with your own numbers:

Your employer, not just your role

Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is your legal employer if you work here, which is what continuous service and any redundancy pay calculation is based on. See our explainer on NHS structure for how trusts, ICBs and NHS England fit together.

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Frequently asked questions