MENTAL health services are challenged “across the country”, health secretary Matt Hancock said in Teesside yesterday.

Mr Hancock, who visited Middlesbrough on Friday, said he was looking at what needs to be done to strengthen provision of services in the region.

He was asked whether the Department for Health would intervene at Tees, Esk and Wear Valley NHS Trust.

There have been several calls from Labour MPs Alex Cunningham and Andy McDonald for Government intervention at the troubled trust following a series of reports into failures.

This month, the coroner for Durham and Darlington wrote to Mr Hancock following the inquest of 24-year-old Mina Topley-Bird, who died while being treated at the trust’s West Park Hospital, in Darlington.

Coroner James Thompson wrote to the health secretary about formalising how mental health patients are transferred between hospitals.

Mr Hancock said: “I have seen that letter and we are working on it and working with the minister for mental health and suicide prevention Nadine Dorries on what we need to do to strengthen mental health provision locally.

“There have been challenges to mental health services right across the country.

“We all know the lockdown has had an impact. It was necessary to stop covid but  its had impacts that lockdown has left behind. We are determined to be honest and up front about those challenges and to address them.”

Mr McDonald and Mr Cunningham wrote to the Government earlier this year following a report by the Care Quality Commission which identified concerns about   five psychiatric intensive care wards at West Park Hospital, Darlington, Roseberry Park, in Middlesbrough and Cross Lane Hospital, Scarborough.

The services were rated as inadequate.

At the time, trust chief executive Brent Kilmurray said: “The report has rightly highlighted issues we had already identified as needing improvement and we were already working to address them.

“A huge amount of work has taken place since the CQC visited our inpatient wards in January and we’re continuing to make improvements for the benefit of our patients and staff.

“To support that, we will be spending £3.6 million on recruiting 80 more care staff across our inpatient wards. We are also making significant investment in technology that will free our people to spend more time on patient care.”

The trust is already subject to a series of independent investigations commissioned by NHS England.

They will look into failings at West Lane Hospital, in Middlesbrough, and the deaths of 17-year-old patients Christie Harnett and Nadia Sharif in 2019 and Emily Moore, 18, who died at Lanchester Road Hospital, near Durham, last February.

The former West Lane Hospital, in Middlesbrough, reopened last month with a new name ­ - Acklam Road Hospital - with a 10 bed ward being run by Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust.

The hospital had closed in 2019 following the deaths of Christie and Nadia.