Hundreds of new families added to review
Rob Sissons
BBC News, Nottingham
Isaac Ashe
BBC News, East Midlands
BBC
Donna Ockenden has been leading a review since 2022
Hundreds of new families will be included in the UK’s largest review into maternity failings, delaying the findings until 2026.
Senior midwife Donna Ockenden began an inquiry in September 2022 to investigate stillbirths, neonatal deaths, injured babies and mothers, and maternal deaths at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH).
The review had registered more than 2,000 cases dating back to 2012 and had hoped to be able to reveal its findings by September, however this has now been pushed back to June 2026 with the hospitals trust saying it “supported the decision”.
It comes as Nottinghamshire Police also said it had launched a second investigation after a file containing maternity documents had been deleted.
The review will now look at about 2,500 cases, Mc Ockenden said
On Saturday, families involved in the review were told 300 more cases will be added to the inquiry after a discrepancy was noted by a coroner.
As a result, the NUH appointed an individual to look into the matter, and a computer file had been created as part of their work.
However, a spokesperson for Nottinghamshire Police said “that file came to be deleted”, prompting an investigation.
NUH said the file was reported as deleted in July 2024 and has since been “fully restored”.
The trust said two investigations, one internal and one by the counter fraud team, had been unable to determine the cause of the deletion.
Anthony May, NUH chief executive, said the trust is treating the loss “extremely seriously” and is working with police.
He added: “We have put the appropriate measures in place to secure the digital files so that this cannot happen again.”
All the cases are being reviewed by more than 120 clinical reviewers across the country, and the team of experts will be expanded now the fresh cases have come to light.
Commenting on the delay, Ms Ockenden said: “We now expect that the review will have around 2,500 families in it and publication of our final report with the extra cases will need to move.”
Mr May said he supported the decision to extend the review to include the new families.
“Since the start of the review in September 2022, we have worked closely with Donna Ockenden and her team, and this will continue through to the report’s publication and beyond,” he said.
“While the review is ongoing, we will continue to do everything we can to improve our maternity services further.”
Analysis
By Rob Sissons, East Midlands health correspondent
The Nottingham review into maternity failings at the city’s hospitals was already the biggest in NHS history, even before news that around 300 new cases are to be added.
The concerns about missing cases appear to have been first raised by the Nottinghamshire coroner and it’s in response to that the trust appointed someone to look into it
The loss of a file they set up containing details of some baby deaths raises some big questions.
The main question of course is why did this data go missing for days, albeit temporarily?
At the meeting in Nottingham organised by Donna Ockenden to update them on her review, families were speculating as to why the data may have vanished.
It’s now left to the police to confirm whether or not it was an IT glitch, human error, or something more sinister involving a deliberate loss of the material.
The computer investigation involves Nottinghamshire Police’s specialist cyber security experts and is running separate to Operation Perth which is the main investigation into whether there has been any criminality in maternity services through the years.
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