Putney’s hospitals are the second worst-run in London, according to their own staff.
Only one London NHS trust ranked lower than the one running Queen Mary’s Hospital in Roehampton and St George’s Hospital in Tooting.
St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust came 17th of 18 in the latest NHS Staff Survey.
The results were published last month and the St George’s NHS Trust Board discussed its position at its 8 May meeting. We won’t know until the end of the week what it said.
Staff survey results matter because regulators treat them as a leading indicator of patient experience. The Care Quality Commission and Healthwatch lean on the data when judging whether a trust is well-led. The survey asks staff under the NHS People Promise framework about leadership, recognition and working conditions, and combines the results into two overall scores: engagement and morale.
For the patients of Queen Mary’s and St George’s, the result is the closest available signal of how their hospital is run. Trusts where staff don’t recommend their workplace also tend to be trusts where staff are harder to keep, with knock-on effects on shifts and continuity of care.
Queen Mary’s, the closer of the two hospitals for most Putney residents, was saved from losing its minor injuries unit by a community campaign last autumn.
The 2025 survey was carried out in October and November 2025, while St George’s was still operating as its own organisation. Since March 2026 it has been part of GESH, a group that also runs Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust. New chief executive Mat Shaw started in April and made Queen Mary’s his first stop.
Earlier staff concerns
This is not the first time staff at the trust have been a public issue. In September 2025, hospital bosses banned staff from sharing a petition opposing service cuts at Queen Mary’s. Two months later, we set out evidence of toxic culture and racism inside the trust. The new survey result is the staff’s own published verdict, on top of those earlier accounts.
The 2026 NHS Staff Survey runs in the autumn, with national results expected in early 2027. Trusts that score poorly are usually expected to publish action plans setting out specific measures and timescales. The group board’s next meeting is on 9 July, at Queen Mary’s.
Patients and families with concerns about care can contact the trust’s Patient Advice and Liaison Service at pals@stgeorges.nhs.uk. Healthwatch Wandsworth gathers patient experience independently of the trust. NHS staff with concerns about their own workplace can raise them through their trust’s Freedom to Speak Up guardian.
