BOSSES at Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust have vowed to make major improvements to protect patients.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has told the trust it must make significant improvements to "protect patients who are at risk of harm" and had failed to learn from previous mistakes.

It comes after a damning independent report slammed Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, for failing to properly investigate the deaths of hundreds of people.

CQC inspectors visited the trust in January as part of an inspection In a statement, the CQC said it has issued a warning notice "requiring the trust to improve its governance arrangements to ensure robust investigation and learning from incidents and deaths, to reduce future risks to patients".

A CQC statement said: "Inspectors found that the trust had failed to mitigate against significant risks posed by some of the physical environments from which it delivered mental health and learning disability services and did not operate effective governance arrangements to ensure robust investigation of incidents, including deaths.

"It did not adequately ensure it learned from incidents to reduce future risks to patients. In addition, inspectors found that the trust did not effectively respond to concerns about safety raised by patients, their carers and staff, or respond to concerns raised by trust staff about their ability to carry out their roles effectively."

The trust would not answer questions on the future of Chief Executive of NHS Foundation Trust Katrina Percy, whose position has come under fire.

Earlier in the year, trust medical director Dr Lesley Stevens insisted they had made “real changes” since the Mazars inquiry, which revealed that of the 10,306 deaths between April 2011 and March, 2015, 722 were categorised as unexpected and only 272 had been investigated.

The trust has been hit by a series of scandals including the family of Winchester University student advisor Louse Locke vowing to take legal action against the trust.

Miss Locke, 44, was found hanging at her home in Highcliffe in May last year - a day after her pleas to be taken to hospital were turned down.

The trust has said it has implemented a series of measures to improve the reporting of deaths and has brought in other changes since Miss Locke's death.

Dr Kathy McLean, executive medical director at NHS Improvement, said: "Patients and service users at Southern Health expect to get safe and good quality care, and it is worrying to see that the CQC have identified patient safety concerns which have still gone unaddressed at the trust.

"The trust needs to ensure that it fixes these issues quickly and that it can spot and quickly mitigate any future risks to patients and service users. If we don't see enough progress on this we will consider taking action on behalf of patients."

Chief executive of Southern Health Katrina Percy, said: "I have been very clear and open that we have a lot of work to do to fully address recent concerns raised about the trust.

"Good progress has been made, however we accept that the CQC feels that in some areas we have not acted swiftly enough. My main priority is, and always has been, the safety of our patients. We take the CQC's concerns extremely seriously and have taken a number of further actions.

"I want to reassure our patients and their families that I, and the board, remain completely focused on tackling these concerns as quickly as possible."

CQC expects to publish a full report of its January 2016 inspection of Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust later this month.