New maternity service worries at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

Conflict of interest

To further heighten tensions, the regulator CQC has recently been criticised as being “not fit for purpose,” having a “conflict of interest” and a complete lack of independence because Sir Julian Hartley, who led the trust in Leeds for 10 years until January 2023, took over as Chief Executive of the CQC in December 2024.

The maternity units at Leeds General Infirmary and St James’s University Hospital are the subject of a recent BBC investigation. They used a freedom of information request to obtain data which showed 56 potentially preventable baby deaths and two mothers at the trust between January 2019 and July 2024. This included 27 stillbirths and 29 neonatal deaths – which is a death within 28 days after birth. In addition, they found that the trust in Leeds had the highest neonatal mortality rate in the UK at 4.46 per 1,000 live births in 2022.

Inadequate and traumatic care

Grieving families believe ‘inadequate and traumatic’ maternity care contributed to deaths which could have been avoided and have identified:

• A failure to listen to patients
• A “tick box” and “wait and see” culture
• Lack of compassionate care

Families are calling for an independent review into LTH NHS Trust to ensure issues are identified and lessons learned. They also want an independent, judge-led public inquiry to help improve maternity safety across England because of wider concerns about the standard of care.

Action needed, not just apologies

Chris Dzikiti, CQC’s interim chief inspector of healthcare, said: “Maternity services provided by Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust have been and continue to be subject to close oversight and we monitor quality and safety on an ongoing basis using a wide range of information – including feedback and experiences shared with us by families and hospital staff.”

He added that the maternity services at the two hospitals were inspected last month “in response to concerns raised by families and risks identified through our ongoing monitoring.”

The findings from the inspection will be published shortly.

Access to safe, effective and personalised maternity care

Rachael Flanagan, Head of Medical Negligence and Personal Injury at Alsters Kelley said

“Any apologies need to be accompanied by clear and meaningful action so that all mothers and their families can expect safe, effective, reliable and high-quality maternity services as standard.”

She continued. “Every pregnant woman should have access to safe, effective and truly personalised maternity care. It’s essential that Leeds General Infirmary and St James’s University Hospital take any findings from the inspection and a possible review extremely seriously and do what they can to reduce ongoing risk and prevent any further tragedies from happening.”

Rachael concluded. “Both myself, and my colleague Senior Solicitor Haidee Vedy, have a huge amount of experience when it comes to medical negligence. As medical negligence lawyers, it’s our job to recover necessary compensation for victims of negligence who may have suffered physical and/or psychological injury.”

Free initial meeting for support and advice

If you have any concerns about the treatment either you and your baby have received and would like help or advice, please contact Rachael Flanagan on 01926 356030 or email rachael.flanagan@alsterskelley.com.