I hope all of you managed to have time away from the Trust and the opportunity to rest and re-energise yourselves.

I am acutely aware of the many pressures the Trust currently faces - waiting lists in all services and acute pressure on beds, just to name two. I want to thank all of you for giving it your all every day.

Every role in the Trust supports providing safe and high quality care. To do the best for our patients and carers we need to care for ourselves and I hope you are all doing that.

Once again it is all change at ELFT. Paul Calaminus left us at the end of August to take on the chief executive officer (CEO) role at North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT) where he has had an immediate impact.

This is not goodbye to Paul. NELFT is one of our most important system partners and every conversation I have with Paul in his new role references the multiple areas where the two Trusts are collaborating and have the potential to collaborate to improve services across the geographies of both Trusts and to reduce variation in north-east London in particular.

What a delight is was to be able to appoint Lorraine Sunduze, formerly our chief nurse to the interim CEO position at ELFT.

Lorraine has hit the ground running and you will hear in coming weeks about her personal priorities. Lorraine, Paul and I have started to meet as a trio every week to take about priorities at both Trusts and explore further oppertunities to collaborate.

In one of the meetings of both Trust boards earlier this year we coined the phrase 'collaboration by default' and that is what we aspire to.

I watch with trepidation the rising number of Covid cases at the same time I notice every venue I walk into becoming more and more crowded. Please stay safe and take care of yourselves.

Eileen Taylor