Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust Chief Executive to retire in November 2020

Sally Morris, Chief Executive of Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (EPUT), has announced her plan to retire in just over a year’s time. She has led the Trust since its establishment by a merger in 2017, after being Chief Executive of a predecessor organisation, South Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (SEPT). Her retirement date is 30 November 2020.

Sally will have spent 25 years working for the NHS in Essex. She became Chief Executive of SEPT after being the Trust’s Executive Director of Operations for several years. Before that, she worked at Board-level for a number of other Essex NHS organisations.

Sally said: “EPUT aims to be rated by the CQC as an “outstanding” Trust overall by 2022. The organisation needs a leader who plans to remain in post for at least the next two to three years and I plan to retire just before next Christmas. This Trust and our staff are extremely important to me, so I’ve given more than a year’s notice to ensure the Trust Board has plenty of time to recruit the best possible successor to my post.”

So far during her tenure, Sally has successfully overseen the merger of two Essex Trusts to establish EPUT, has led the new Trust to achieving a ‘good’ rating from the CQC just a year later and continues to lead on improving the quality of EPUT’s services.

Last week, the CQC announced that the Trust has retained its overall rating of ‘good’ and has a new rating as ‘outstanding’ overall for ‘caring’. The Trust’s mental health services for children and young people and community end of life care services are now also rated as ‘outstanding’ overall.

Trust Chair, Professor Sheila Salmon, said: "Sally is a dedicated and inspirational Chief Executive. We provide services from a large number of sites across Essex. Sally is well-known to many of our staff from her frequent visits to talk with them and see for herself how things are going – including dropping by the wards in the early hours for a chat. We will all miss her very much when she retires, but I’m very pleased we have the reassurance of her steady hand and clear sightedness steering us through for more than a year yet. Whoever we appoint to replace Sally will have a very hard act to follow indeed."