The region's troubled mental health trust has come in for fresh criticism over its data scandal - with campaigners branding its bosses "disingenuous". 

The Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust published the results of its controversial mortality review last week - an independent study into how it keeps track of deaths in its care.

The review, carried out by auditor Grant Thornton, exposed several shortcomings in the trust's data collection, sparking allegations it had "lost count" of the number of people who had died.

Alongside the report, NSFT published a number of statistics it had collected independently from the review relating to the past five years.

But campaigners have questioned these figures - accusing bosses of "gaslighting" and "misleading the public".

Among these was the number of prevention of future deaths reports the trust received in the five-year period - a figure it gave as 13.

Between April 2018 and April 2023, NSFT was sent 21 of these reports, which are prepared by coroners if an inquest has shown action needs to be taken to stop similar deaths.

However, in collating the figure, the trust discounted reports when the death occurred outside the timescale.

Eastern Daily Press: Caroline Aldridge, from the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services. Picture: NewsquestCaroline Aldridge, from the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services. Picture: Newsquest (Image: Archant 2021)

Caroline Aldridge, whose son Tim died in September 2014, said: "This data is misleading and presumes bereaved families and the public to be too stupid to notice deliberate manipulation of statistics.

"This has only added to bereaved relatives' distress and further evidences a culture that cannot be trusted to produce honest, understandable, reliable data."

Eastern Daily Press: Mr Richardson wrote that disclosing the action plan would undermine his staff speaking openly to the inspectors

Stuart Richardson, chief executive at NSFT, said: "We recognised the report did not address questions around number of deaths, so we took the decision - as part of our commitment to being open and transparent - to publish information on our website at the same time.

"We applied a consistent timeframe of five financial years for all the data we published.

"We discuss every prevention of future death report we receive at our public board meeting and ever report is included in our public board papers."