'Work ahead' to restore sexual health service

A campaign group has celebrated the return of an in-person sexual health service to the NHS, but warned there was still long way to go to get it back up to scratch.

In December, the CQC rated Solutions 4 Health (S4H) Newcastle "inadequate" and placed it in special measures after finding it breached legal regulations by putting patients at risk of contamination.

S4H said it agreed a "mutual termination" of the contract with Newcastle City Council and had no further comment.

Dr Helen Murrell, a retired GP and member of Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) North East, said the "risk of reputational harm" was significant and it would take work to get the public to trust it again.

"We were very, very unhappy from the beginning and we've been very aware that the service wasn't going well," she said.

South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust has been awarded a £6.7m contract to take over the in-person clinic, which is now based in Summerhill's Ravensworth Terrace, until the end of February 2028.

Before moving to its current location, the service was based at New Croft House in the city centre and then Hadrian House, where the CQC inspection took place.

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, council bosses issued more than a dozen legal warnings to S4H between June 2024 and September 2025 regarding potential breaches of its contract.

During the inspection in July, inspectors found "new swabs and pots for chlamydia and gonorrhoea testing were being stored under the staining sink in open boxes, leaving them open to contamination".

Eleven records had no documentation of people's medical history, allergies, lifestyle review or safeguarding assessments.

And the service was experiencing delays in receiving test results, which led to people receiving delayed treatment.

Murrell said the "real world harm" caused by the inadequate-rated service was not yet known.

"I think that the risk of reputational harm for the whole STI service is bad and obviously it's really important that people trust it.

"If you want to eradicate or reduce infections which can cause infertility and other life-long complications if not treated early then being seen ASAP is essential.

"All the delays and all the inadequacies are just building more infections."

S4H took over the face-to-face contract from the NHS in 2023, after Newcastle Hospitals Trust did not make an offer to continue its contract for the council.

The in-person service offered testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), contraception and family planning advice.

At the same time, the digital service, which covers things like contact tracing, was handed to separate provider called Preventx.

KONP is also campaigning for this to go back under NHS control and said it believed it was not carrying out the service it was contracted to.

Preventx has been contacted for a response, but Alice Wiseman, director of public health for Newcastle City Council, said the digital sexual health provider was "performing strongly against all key performance indicators".

Wiseman said the "issues" with S4H's service was why the Labour-led council agreed to "mutually terminate" the contract and that it was working to address any concern.

"We will continue to monitor public health outcomes, and we are confident that our providers and their teams of dedicated staff can ensure that people in Newcastle receive the high-quality, safe, and effective care they need," she said.

Murrell, whose group describes itself as "non-party-political" and which campaigns "against the privatisation and underfunding of the NHS", called for more drop-in sessions to be implemented by the trust "rapidly".

"Obviously, South Tyneside and Sunderland are taking on that service knowing all the terrible problems they're going to have to sort out," she said.

"They'll have to do a lot of work because, obviously, they're going to inherit a service that's fundamentally failing and failing its client group and has done that for two and a half years."

A spokesperson for South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust said it has "a great deal of expertise and experience providing high quality sexual health services".

"We will be working with the existing provider as we begin the transition to take on this service," they said.

"We want to make sure this happens smoothly for both patients and staff."

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