The number of serious incidents and complaints reported to the region's mental health trust rose last year, it can be revealed.

Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust's (NSFT) annual report, covering April 2016 to March 2017, showed there were 242 serious incidents (SIs) in that time, compared to 216 in 2015/16.

Serious incident reviews take place after there are unexpected or avoidable deaths or severe harm to a patient, or allegations of abuse.

In the last year 184 of the SIs were unexpected deaths, up from 158 the year before. A proportion of these had a natural or physical cause.

But concerns have been raised about the 71 open SI cases by South Norfolk CCG in its latest board papers.

NSFT said in the report: 'During this year the trust has taken action to implement the recommendations of the trust's external review, completed by Verita, strengthening our actions to communicate with families and determine the underlying factors influencing serious incidents.'

The report also showed the number of complaints made to the trust had risen, from 592 in 2015/16 to 661 in 2016/17.

These were largely in the areas of receiving care or treatment, the attitudes and behaviour of staff, and the out-of-hours service.

It was generally accepted this had been due to a lack of staff or procedural issues, plus long waiting lists for community treatment in some areas. But the report said 'changes have been made in various teams across the trust, which include increased capacity following recruitment and alternative ways in which to relay messages to staff'.

Issues with staff, the report said, had been prevalent in hospital services 'where a person's presentation may be more difficult to manage'. But it was reported that team meetings and line management supervision looked at how to better handles those situations.

And 'many complainants highlighted a disjointed approach with other agencies, or that contact from the trust's crisis teams is not particularly well managed'.

In the report it says joint learning discussions had taken place 'although it has been difficult to pinpoint any specific areas where agencies can work better together'.

When the report was written, 554 complaints had been responded to with 13pc upheld, 29pc partially upheld and 43pc not upheld. A further 15pc were stood down. Some 14 complainants requested a review of their complaint by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, with five of these resulting in actions being recommended to the trust.

The annual report was included in papers released ahead of the trust's Council of Governor's meeting tomorrow, Friday.

In the papers, staff governors Marcus Hayward, Howard Tidman and Zeyar Winn also expressed concern over the closure of the on-call pharmacy service.

They said: 'We understand that this means out-of-hours pharmacy advice and support (i.e. for obtaining non-standard medication and CDs for overnight and weekend admissions) is no longer available.'

They wanted to know whether there had been a consultation on this, as well as what alternatives were in place.

However medical director Bohdan Solomka said: 'At NSFT we are continually reviewing the efficiency of our services to ensure we are spending NHS resources efficiently.

'As part of this, in 2016 we reviewed the on-call pharmacy service and discovered that in the whole of that year no medicines need to be dispensed between the hours of 11pm and 8am. This has led to the decision to offer a pharmacy service between 8am and 5pm.

'After that time, staff can access their emergency drug cupboard on each site across the trust, which will now have an increased range of drugs.

'In rare cases, if a drug is not available on a ward or emergency drug cupboard then controlled drugs or other medication can be obtained from a community pharmacy.

'Out of hours information has been shared with staff and medication advice can always be sought from the on-call senior consultant.'