I was surprised to read your post at the NHS Leadership Academy – Leadership when the going gets tough – yesterday. Much of this post says little (with the customary dose of self promotion) but one section stood out;

So what have I learnt about leading when the going gets tough? Firstly, openness and transparency are fundamental when things go wrong.

I have to say the #justiceforLB shed heaved a sigh of relief reading this. (Virtually, as George remains ‘lost in action’ around wondrous Swedish lakes, and I was at home trying to ignore random pizza making involving hot dog crusts and melted grease proof paper).

A long old battle and all, but we’ve always prided ourselves on being reasonable and rational (as well as open and transparent). So, in the spirit of openness and transparency, and in no particular order, could you please respond to the following:

• Can you explain why you did nothing about the state of the unit between LB’s death in July and the CQC inspection in September?
• Can you explain why patients were not offered support to help them come to terms with LB’s death in the unit when staff were?
• Can you explain what the phrase ‘Mum is known to the Trust’ means and why it was used in your SIRI documentation?
• Can you provide a more convincing explanation of why your board minutes stated LB died of natural causes and all due process were followed, when he didn’t and they clearly weren’t?
• Can you let us know what the situation is with staff disciplinary actions and whether you intend to refer any staff to their disciplinary bodies?
• Can you explain why the process of staff disciplinary actions has taken over 14 months so far?
• Can you explain why we had to fight so hard to get the final copy of the independent report into LB’s death published?
• Can you un-redact and re-send the large set of blacked out documentation received as access to records requests?
• Can you explain why you felt it necessary to construct a trolling/hacking issue around your employees twitter accounts and attribute this to me in a veiled statement to Monitor?
• Can you provide evidence of the alleged account hacking of your staff?
• Can you explain why you circulated an edited version of Trust communications/interactions with us to your Board members (and wider) which omitted a whole series of interactions, including those around bullying and sacking our advocate?
• Can you provide a more convincing explanation for not disclosing the full set of LB’s records before February 2014 despite repeated requests by our solicitor from July 2013 onwards?
• Can you explain the discrepancies between the minutes of Community Team Meetings we received and the set eventually received as part of the disclosure of records?
• Can you explain how an independent investigation into deaths in your learning disability/mental health provision, commissioned by David Nicholson, was apparently concluded in June (according to your board minutes) when it hasn’t yet started?
• Can you confirm that the ‘bath ban’ has been lifted at John Sharich House?
• And finally, can you explain why you closely surveil our social media activity and yet listen to nothing that is said?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sara