East of England Ambulance Service boss apologises after 'distressing' racism claims

• ITV Anglia's David Whiteley spoke to Tom Abell about the claims.

The boss of an ambulance service where employees were subject to racist abuse including colleagues "making monkey sounds" at staff has apologised.

The Chief Executive of the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust (EEAST) Tom Abell today called the claims "distressing" and "unacceptable" as a report into the organisation revealed racist abuse faced by its employees.

The claims come after EEAST employed a specialist equality, diversity, and inclusion consultancy firm to produce a report on the trust.

There were 120 Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) staff members contacted by McKenzie LLP with 58 employees giving responses.

Several of those responses said that many BME staff members had been asked to translate for patients speaking "gobbledygook", even if they didn't speak their language.

Another comment claimed that "when my team were ordering a takeaway they didn’t order me one as they told me that they were ordering a curry and I was probably sick of them as I must eat them all the time”.

Responding to the allegations Mr Abell told ITV News Anglia that they are "completely unacceptable" and that the trust has "an awful lot of work to do" to solve the issues.

"We knew that there were concerns from colleagues within the trust which was the reason we commissioned this report to better understand the experience of all of the Black and Minority Ethnic colleagues we have across the trust, so we can start to take action so we can solve some very deep-seated and long-term concerns that they have had around behaviours from colleagues," he said.

"It's distressing and upsetting and completely unacceptable and the reason we are publishing the report is that I think it's really important for us to be open and transparent about some of the issues that we face so we can get into a conversation around the change that's necessary from all of us, that's necessary for the ambulance service to improve the service we provide to patients, but also the way we look after each other."

Mr Abell also said that disciplinary action had already taken place in regard to some of the allegations.

"We are taking action to be able to resolve some of these long-term concerns that some of our colleagues have had within the trust and by being open and transparent about it is the way I believe we will do this and see the culture change that we clearly need to see.

"Personally, I have apologised to everybody who has been affected by this unacceptable behaviour and we will act fairly appropriately and swiftly if this behaviour continues," he told ITV News.

The report also claimed employees said that they had complained after a manager's husband "coloured himself black and dressed as Mr T" for a work fancy dress party and were ignored.

The report's author, Lauren Singleton, deputy director of culture and leadership, wrote that "the survey makes difficult reading".

"There is evidence of very outdated behaviours and attitudes among a minority of managers.

"There could be a negative impact on the Trust’s reputation as a safe and positive place to work, which might be perceived to undermine the good work done around the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and CQC in recent months," the report says.

Mr Abell also said the trust is now working hard to try and resolve the issues.

"We've got an awful lot of work we still need to do within this ambulance service," he said.

"I'm 18 months in and I said it was going to take 3-5 years to resolve some of these very long-standing concerns that our ambulance service has had for many years.

"I feel that we are starting to make progress but there's clearly much more that we need to do".

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