The region's troubled mental health trust has drafted in a leading NHS alumni to investigate racism within the organisation.

The Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust has commissioned Yvonne Coghill, formerly a senior figure at NHS England, to conduct an inquiry into the culture at the trust.

It comes after Ms Coghill, who spent more than five years as NHS England's director of workforce race equality standard, gave a keynote speech at a conference attended by the trust's leadership team.

Caroline Donovan, chief executive of NSFT, said: "I believe there is a lot of racism in society in general and I know who have got it in this trust - although there are also examples of how we have developed people in the BME (black and minority ethnicity) community too.

"We have commissioned Yvonne Coghill to do a detailed analysis of what we are doing and what our staff tell us about things."

(Image: NSFT)

Ms Donovan, who was appointed chief executive of the struggling organisation in October last year, added she was keen to ensure inequalities within the trust are addressed.

She said: "We need to start talking about this and asking how we can best support people - we need to have a real long talk about this.

"To be able to address racism, we have got to be able to first acknowledge that this is there."

The trust is not the first NHS organisation in the region to have recently placed additional focus on trying to address race inequalities.

Last year, the East of England Ambulance Service Trust carried out its own inquiry into racism among colleagues - which highlighted a host of troubling incidents.

Among these were accusations that workers had mimicked monkey sounds and asked colleagues to translate "gobbledygook" languages.

These findings were made after EEAST conducted a survey among its BME workers - which was published last March.

Ms Coghill held the key role at NHS England for more than five years, but is now director of an organisation called Excellence in Action.