Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust (WWL) is proud to have been named as the cleanest Acute Trust in the country for the third year running, out of 119 Trusts.
Patient-Led Assessments of the Care Environment (PLACE) assessments provide motivation for improvement by providing a clear message, directly from patients, about how the environment or services of a Trust might be enhanced. For 2025, WWL has taken joint first place nationally, and first place within the North West for all Acute Trusts.
Over the last eight years, WWL has been consistently placed within the top ten per cent of the country, with 2025 continuing to show how the Trust ensures the highest standards and improvements within the clinical environment for our patients.
Mary Fleming, Chief Executive for WWL said: “I am so, so proud of our teams and that our clinical environments across our WWL sites continue to be recognised as excellent spaces within which we provide treatment and care for our patients. To do this continually for three years is truly impressive.
“A huge amount of daily effort goes into creating a welcoming and clean environment for our patients, and the scores from this assessment are certainly a true reflection of that hard work and dedication.”
The PLACE assessments took place across all Trust sites including the Royal Albert Edward Infirmary, the Thomas Linacre Centre and six of the community premises owned by WWL.
The assessments involve local people, known as Patient Assessors, going into hospitals and community premises as part of a team to assess how the environment supports the provision of clinical care, assessing areas such as privacy and dignity, food, cleanliness, general building maintenance and, more recently, the extent to which the environment is able to support the care of those with dementia.
WWL’s cleanliness score and condition, appearance, and maintenance scored the highest score of 100 per cent, placing the Trust at the top in both categories nationally, alongside the Royal Papworth Hospital, Cambridge.
WWL’s dementia score was 96.21 per cent, placing WWL eighth in the country, with disability access scoring fifth place nationally, at 98.87 per cent.
Overall, WWL’s food average score was 94.03 per cent. The food assessment is made up of two areas, Organisational Food (92.21) and Ward Food (94.87). The Privacy and Dignity score was 89.88 per cent.
Nick Bastow, Head of Facilities said: “We are absolutely delighted to be named the cleanest Acute Trust once again. We are proud to be able to offer our patients and visitors the highest standard of cleanliness within our clinical environment. We have also embarked on the refurbishment of a number of wards and clinical areas within the past year to provide a bright, modern patient environment. Well done to each and every one of our Estates and Facilities teams, they truly are the best of the best.”