An abortion clinic has been savaged in a watchdog report which has branded those in charge of the facility as "inadequate".
And staff have spoken of a "culture of blame and harassment" which created a "demoralising environment at the centre".
The criticisms are contained in a report by the Care Quality Commission into the clinic run by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service in Streatham, London.
The document states that the operation requires "improvement" while pro-life campaigners from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) say the report is the "worst" of its kind they have seen.
SPUC spokesperson Alithea Williams said:
"This clinic, which is commissioned by the NHS to kill thousands of babies a year, cannot even get things like staff training and competency correct. It is unacceptable that women’s safety is being put at risk in this way."
In a litany of highly critical comments the CQC report highlights details of:
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Staff who had not completed immediate life support training, sepsis training, or medicine management training
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Some staff had insufficient safeguarding training
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Not all equipment was in good working order or had been calibrated
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The service did not always manage patient safety incidents well. Staff did not always report incidents
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Patients were not offered the choice to take the second pill of a medical abortion in the clinic
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Local leaders did not always have the skills and abilities to run the service
Alithea Williams added: "This is the worst rating we’ve seen a clinic get. When the CQC rates abortion clinics, it asks if they are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led. In its report the CQC said that the clinic required improvement on safety, effectiveness, and responsiveness, while ‘well-led’ was rated as inadequate."
Ratings were introduced in September 2017.
Much of the report focuses on personnel, and it states:
"The service did not always make sure staff were competent for their roles."
It goes on: "We found one staff record where certain competencies for the role they were employed for had not been signed off since they started the organisation over three years ago."
The report is particularly damning about the clinic’s leadership, rating it as inadequate. It said that "local leaders did not always have the skills and abilities to run the service" … and ... "staff did not always feel respected, supported and valued" … as well as … "risks were not always fully identified, and actions taken to reduce their impact".
Staff reported a negative culture and the report continues:
"Most staff we spoke with told us they felt the culture was reactive rather than proactive, with a culture of blame and harassment and this had created an unsupportive and demoralising environment at the centre."
Alithea Williams said: "It is not surprising that a clinic that kills thousands of unborn babies a year, especially one that specialises in late-term abortions, should prove a difficult place to work."
Alithea Williams also questioned the BPAS’ focus on the use of the abortion pill at home.
The report states: "The clinic had recently started to offer patients the home use of misoprostol. However, we found women were not offered the choice of returning to the clinic to take the second tablet if they wanted to."
This is the second time in months that a BPAS clinic has been rated as inadequate.
A September report on the Merseyside clinic found a catalogue of safety abuses, and the CQC were actually contacted by the local NHS trust in March 2018, "who raised concerns regarding the frequency of patients coming to them from BPAS Merseyside."
Notes to editors: