Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust: Pay, CQC Rating & Working There

What LPT actually runs

Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust (provider code RT5) is a specialist mental health, learning disability and community health trust serving Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland — a combined population in the region of 1.1 million people. It has been reported at around 4,500 staff in recent years, though a precise, current headline figure wasn't independently verifiable from public sources at the time of writing.

Its main mental health inpatient site is the Bradgate Mental Health Unit, on the Glenfield Hospital campus in Leicester, housing seven acute admission wards and a 10-bed male psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU), alongside a Mental Health Urgent Care Hub. Stewart House and The Willows provide rehabilitation care for people with severe and enduring mental illness. Beyond mental health, LPT also runs a network of local community hospitals across Coalville, the Evington Centre, Hinckley & Bosworth, Loughborough, Melton Mowbray, Rutland Memorial and St Luke's Hospital — a broader service mix than a purely mental-health-focused trust, and one that gives staff exposure to community physical health nursing alongside mental health and learning disability work within a single employer.

Mental health nursing progresses through exactly the same Agenda for Change bands as any other field of nursing — our nursing guide covers Band 5 through senior practice and leadership roles across all fields — and allied health professionals working in mental health, forensic and community settings are covered in our AHP guide.

CQC rating: a stale headline, a genuinely improving picture

LPT's published overall Care Quality Commission rating is Requires Improvement, from a comprehensive inspection dated 29 October 2021 (CQC provider RT5) — rated Requires Improvement for safe, effective, responsive and well-led, and Good for caring. That headline figure hasn't been refreshed trust-wide since, and — unlike some other trusts where a stale rating masks more recent bad news — here it substantially understates genuine, more recent improvement at individual-service level.

A run of focused inspections through 2026 tells a considerably more positive story: mental health crisis services and health-based places of safety were rated Good (March 2026), specialist community mental health services for children and young people (CAMHS) were rated Good (April 2026), community-based mental health services for adults of working age were rated Good (April 2026), and wards for people with learning disabilities or autism were rated Good (August 2026). Not every service has moved the same way: acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units, and long stay or rehabilitation mental health wards, both still carried Requires Improvement ratings at their most recent assessments in 2024. Read this as a genuine, largely positive improvement trend with some services still catching up, rather than either a uniformly solved problem or an unchanged 2021 picture — and check the CQC's own current provider page for RT5 for the latest position on any specific service.

NHS Staff Survey: above average on every single measure

In the 2025 NHS Staff Survey, LPT had 3,924 completed questionnaires at a 56% response rate — above the 52% median for its 48-organisation benchmark group of Mental Health & Learning Disability and Mental Health, Learning Disability & Community trusts (NHS Staff Surveys Coordination Centre benchmark report, provider RT5). On the 0–10 scale used since 2021, LPT scored above its benchmark group's average on every single People Promise element and theme — a genuinely consistent result that lines up with the trust's improving pattern of individual CQC service ratings.

The specific numbers: "We are compassionate and inclusive" scored 7.73 (vs 7.61 average), "We are recognised and rewarded" 6.50 (vs 6.37), "We each have a voice that counts" 7.07 (vs 6.89), "We are safe and healthy" 6.49 (vs 6.34), "We are always learning" 6.19 (vs a comparatively low 5.83 average — the largest positive gap of any measure), "We work flexibly" 7.14 (vs 6.84), "We are a team" 7.31 (vs 7.17) and Morale 6.32 (vs 6.12). Taken together with an above-median response rate, this is a genuinely strong, consistent staff experience result — one of the clearer positive stories among this year's batch of trust profiles.

The Bradgate Unit, Herschel Prins Centre and specialist services

Beyond core adult and older adult mental health and community hospital services, LPT runs several distinct specialist services:

• Regional Eating Disorders Service — provides inpatient eating disorder treatment for the whole East Midlands region, a genuinely wider catchment than the trust's core Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland population.
• Herschel Prins Centre — LPT's forensic mental health service, providing inpatient and community forensic care for people involved with, or at risk of involvement with, the criminal justice system, alongside a separate Forensic Community Learning Disability Team.
• The Agnes Inpatient Unit — a 12-bed inpatient facility for adults with learning disabilities.
• Perinatal and Maternal Mental Health Services — supporting women with moderate to severe mental health problems relating to pregnancy, childbirth and the first year after birth, plus a separate psychology-led, trauma-informed Maternal Mental Health Service.
• Huntington's Disease Service (Mill Lodge) and an Adult Autism Assessment Service — both relatively specialist services for a trust of LPT's size.
• Diana Children's Community Service — nursing care and specialist support for children in the community, reflecting LPT's broader-than-mental-health-only remit.

Pay, banding and no HCAS

Pay at LPT runs on the same national Agenda for Change pay bands as any other NHS trust — Band 2 through Band 9, plus medical and dental pay scales for psychiatrists and other doctors. Leicestershire and Rutland sit entirely outside every High Cost Area Supplement zone, so no location-based percentage uplift applies to any LPT role. Use the NHS Pay Calculator with your specific band and pay point selected to see the actual national pay figure that applies here, and the Unsocial Hours Calculator for what a 24/7 inpatient or PICU rota genuinely adds on top of band pay.

LPT vs Central and North West London

LPT isn't the only trust on this site combining mental health with a wider community and specialist service mix — it's worth comparing it against Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL), already covered in depth here.

Both trusts show a genuinely positive staff-experience story alongside a mixed-to-improving regulatory position, though CNWL operates on a much larger and more geographically scattered scale than LPT's more contained Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland footprint. The NHS Trust Comparison Tool below can help you weigh both trusts, and others, against your own priorities on pay, location and service mix.

Why someone might specifically want to join

Pulling together everything above, a few genuine, verifiable reasons someone might specifically target LPT over another comparable trust:

• A genuinely improving, externally verified CQC trajectory — several core services have moved from Requires Improvement to Good at their most recent inspections, a real and checkable trend rather than an aspirational claim.
• A staff survey result that beat its benchmark average on every single measure in 2025 — a genuinely consistent, positive signal from an above-median response rate.
• A regional specialist role for a mid-sized trust — the East Midlands-wide Eating Disorders Service gives staff exposure to a wider referral base than the trust's core local population alone.
• A genuinely wide service mix — mental health, learning disability, forensic, perinatal and community hospital nursing all sit within the same employer, useful for staff who want breadth without changing trust.
• An honest, checkable regulatory position — the trust's remaining Requires Improvement ratings in acute and rehabilitation wards are publicly documented alongside its improving services elsewhere, giving a genuinely informed picture to weigh before applying to a specific ward or team.

Tools for working out your own numbers

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

Your employer, not just your role

Leicestershire Partnership NHS 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 the broader picture of how trusts, ICBs and NHS England fit together, and how a specialist mental health trust like this one differs from an acute trust operating in the same county.

Related guides

Frequently asked questions