Health regulator Monitor has authorised St George’s to be a Foundation Trust.

To reflect this achievement, the trust’s formal title will change to St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

St George’s chief executive, Miles Scott, said:

"This is a great day for our staff, our patients and the communities we serve. Achieving Foundation Trust status is a recognition of the high quality services and safe care we provide in hospital and in the community.

“Our success is the result of a long period of improvement from a workforce whose energy, commitment and compassion is outstanding.

“We have had to prove that we can live up to our values; Excellent, Kind, Responsible and Respectful. That work does not stop now that we have FT status. In fact, it becomes even more important as our accountability to our communities increases. We have a vibrant membership and a Council of Governors who are ready to get started on their important role of holding the trust leadership to account and ensuring that we have a high level of public engagement in our work.”

Mr Scott added: “In authorising us, Monitor has said it will keep a close eye on the waiting times for patients in our emergency department. We will continue working hard to reduce this and to provide the best possible care for every patient, no matter how busy we are.”

Christopher Smallwood, St George’s chairman, said:

“We have worked hard for this accolade and have had every area of our work scrutinised, studied and questioned. I am thrilled that we have risen to this challenge and were not found wanting. The results from the Care Quality Commission who rated the quality of our services as ‘good’ overall with some areas ‘outstanding’ played a key part in our success.

“I am immensely proud of our staff who work so hard to provide high quality care, not just during inspections but 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”

“We are fortunate to share our main site with St George’s, University of London. They are much more than just good neighbours - we collaborate on research, teaching and learning. We provide an exciting learning environment for students and we work jointly on research in order to make improvements and discoveries together to benefit patient care.”

Miranda Carter, Monitor's Executive Director of Provider Appraisal said:

“We are delighted to announce that Monitor has allowed St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust to become a foundation trust. This is great news for the trust, which benefits from new freedoms, but even better news for its patients, who can have a greater say over their health services.

“The trust has worked very hard to achieve foundation trust status and should feel proud of this accomplishment.”