Over 500 mothers and babies were seriously injured or died at a Nottingham NHS Trust, according an inquiry into the NHS’s biggest ever maternity scandal.
The Ockenden report investigated hundreds of deaths and serious injuries of mothers and their babies over a 13 year period between 2012 and 2025.
Gill Edwards, is a Partner in our Clinical Negligence team who specialises in birth injuries. She said:
“The findings of the Ockenden review into maternity care in Nottingham are deeply upsetting, and our thoughts are with the families whose lives have been devastated by death and serious injury during childbirth.
Sadly, their stories and the findings will not come as a shock to the many families who have experienced avoidable harm in maternity care.
We regularly hear accounts from parents whose concerns have been ignored, with warning signs missed and opportunities to intervene lost. The consequences for families can be profound and lifelong.”
Our clinical negligence team see similar failures in care to those addressed in the report, including failure to respond to concerns about reduced fetal movements, failing to interpret and act on signs of fetal distress in labour such as CTG abnormalities, or to escalate concerns to senior staff in order to perform a timely induction or caesarean section.
Gill added:
“Sadly, some failures in care result in death or serious injury, in some cases with a child going on to be diagnosed with cerebral palsy.
What families want is truth and accountability. They want to understand what happened, whether the harm could have been avoided, and whether lessons can be learned to prevent the same thing happening to someone else.
No legal process can undo the trauma families have suffered. Every family I have met in this situation would rather have a healthy child who is able to fulfil their potential than compensation.”
This most recent report is not the first from Donna Ockenden who has previously investigated Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust which revealed catastrophic failings that contributed to the deaths of more than 200 babies and nine mothers.
Gill added:
“For those families affected, it is unforgivable that the recommendations from previous maternity investigations have not been uniformly implemented across the UK to improve standards. Previous maternity investigations have highlighted the same problems with poor communication, failure to escalate concerns to senior staff, inadequate monitoring, unsafe cultures and a lack of meaningful learning from serious incidents.
The anticipated Report from Baroness Amos into the standard of maternity care across 14 Trusts nationally is likely to reach similar conclusions.
As long ago as 2015, Dr Bill Kirkup CBE, the Chair of the Morecambe Bay Investigation into maternity and neonatal services between 2004 and 2013 said in his Report: “It is vital that the lessons, now plain to see, are learnt and acted upon, not least by other Trusts, which must not believe that ‘it could not happen here’. If those lessons are not acted upon, we are destined sooner or later to add again to the roll of names.”
And here we are in 2026.
There needs to be urgent and measurable action, with the recommendations incorporated into mandatory midwifery and obstetric training nationally.”
How can we help?
If you have experienced something similar to the families involved in the Ockenden report and would like to find out how to make a birth injury claim, you can find out more on our dedicated birth injury page. Our expert solicitors are here to help.
