Freedom to Speak Up Review


The Freedom to Speak Up Review was a review into whistleblowing in the NHS in England. It was announced on 24 June 2014 and it was chaired by Sir Robert Francis. The review was originally expected to report in November 2014 but took longer because of a huge volume of input material: 17,500 online responses and 600 postal responses.
The report was published on 11 February 2015.

Recommendations

Francis outlined twenty principles and associated actions, then concluded by making just two recommendations:
  1. for all NHS organisations and regulators to implement all the principles and actions;
  2. for the Secretary of State to review progress annually.
The twenty principles to allow a consistent approach to raising concerns, while still allowing some flexibility, included:
Many campaigners claimed that the recommendations did not go far enough.

National Guardian

The National Guardian’s Office is an independent, non-statutory body with the remit to lead culture change in the NHS, so that speaking up becomes "business as usual". The office is sponsored by the Care Quality Commission, NHS England and NHS Improvement.
In January 2016 Eileen Sills was appointed as the first Freedom to Speak Up National Guardian for the NHS. She resigned two months later, citing that she did not have sufficient time to combine this role with her other work. Dr Henrietta Hughes was appointed as the second Freedom to Speak Up National Guardian in July 2016.