Ofsted has blasted the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust for making "insufficient progress" in safeguarding apprentices.

In an inspection report published in July, inspectors found that leaders have been "too slow making changes to improve the safety of their apprentices".

As a result the NHS trust’s apprenticeship contract has been terminated and the ambulance service can no longer train apprentices itself.

A monitoring visit which focused on safeguarding arrangements was carried out in January, following safeguarding concerns.

At the time of the visit, a total of 661 apprentices were studying level 3 and level 4 apprentices with the trust.

This came after the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found in June 2020 that the trust had not done enough to ensure staff and patients were protected from sexual abuse, inappropriate behaviours and harassment.

The report found that while senior leaders have increased staff numbers in the safeguarding time, the recent changes this year have not yet stopped the inappropriate behaviour that a significant minority of apprentices still experience.

The report also found leaders and managers don't encourage apprentices to discuss low level concerns that arise and, as a result, managers have an overly optimistic view of the issues that still exist in the service.

Inspectors also found that leaders do not have a robust action plan to ensure compliance with safeguarding arrangements improves rapidly and they don't update staff with safeguarding knowledge in a timely way.

East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust has said that all training and learning for members would transfer to another organisation.

The trust has since invested in a “culture programme” to tackle poor behaviour and staff members and trainees are encouraged to raise concerns.

Tom Davis, interim chief executive of EEAST, said: "We want every staff member to have a positive experience of our organisation.

"We've since put further changes in place to strengthen our safeguarding training and student support, and will be undertaking a detailed review of our education and training provision so that we can improve student experience now and in the future.

"We're working closely with partners to make sure the transition to a new learning provider is as seamless as possible for our apprenticeship students and are determined to make improvements so that these learners feel well supported while they continue their clinical placements with us."