A Camden NHS trust is experiencing “ongoing challenges” with managing its gender identity clinic ahead of its closure, a health watchdog has found.

The Tavistock Centre in Swiss Cottage, the UK’s only dedicated gender identity clinic for children and young people, is set to close this year to be replaced by two new regional centres.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) said that its inspections of Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust at the start of this year were to ensure that its other services continued “to deliver safe and effective care and treatment”.

It was announced last July that the Tavistock Centre would be shutting down to be replaced by a regional network, including a new centre in London and another in the north west of England.

NHS England said it cannot confirm when centre will shut, claiming that the new regional services need to be ready to take on patients to ensure there is no gap in the provision of care.

The CQC said it did not inspect the trust’s gender identity service on this occasion, but carried out inspections of the specialist community mental health services for children and young people (Camhs) and the mental health team at the Portman Clinic.

The health watchdog’s reports into the wider trust saw the Camhs service rated as ‘requires improvement’ for safety, which is a drop from the previous ‘good’ rating.

Jane Ray, CQC deputy director of operations in London, said that staff in the Camden CAMHS south team were expected to use their own phones to communicate with young people, raising the risk they would accidentally share their personal numbers.

Inspectors did not rate the Portman Clinic at this inspection, but the CQC said the overall rating for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust remains at ‘good’.

Jane Ray said: "We found The Portman Clinic has made progress on improving these services since our last inspection.

“People told us they felt supported and safe and that all staff treated them with kindness, compassion, and respect.

“We will continue to monitor the service closely through future inspections, to ensure people are still receiving a high standard of care, and that the trust makes the improvements we’ve told them to.”

A spokesperson for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust said: “Although our overall rating remains ‘Good’, we accept the areas identified for improvement in the reports on our Portman Clinic and specialist Community Mental Health Services for children and young people.

“We are making immediate improvements in the identified areas.”