Just got an FOI back from Countess of Chester Hospital in relation to the neonatal service that was provided by the between January 2015 and July 2016. The reason I put in the FOI was because I suspect that they were being accused of negligence before the arrest of Letby in 2018. There would have been a motive for the doctors to cover their own backs. Now that Letby has been found guilty of murder, the Trust might also try and defend the negligence claims by arguing that Letby breached the employer/employee trust level to such a degree that they are not responsible. I asked COCH in the FOI how many times they had been contacted regarding potential negligence claims for that period and how many claims they had actually received. They replied that they had received 24 notifications of intended claims and had received 4 claims. I also asked them how many complaints or concerns about doctors/locums or consultants they had received during that period . They claim they have no record of any at all. However in the RCPCH report under Section 4.2 (staffing numbers and competencies), it is documented that in one of the cases of infant deaths under investigation the nurses had ‘expressed concern about the capability of the locum registrar whose agency had previously been advised not to offer the doctor to the Trust again’. The report goes on to show that the nurses took steps to ensure the consultant was aware of this, but it was not clear to the Review team that steps had been taken to learn from this or action had been taken to make sure the same situation did not recur.

It is unclear therefore why the hospital is claiming there were ‘no concerns raised’ during that period because there were concerns raised by the nurses as documented in the RCPCH report. According to Richard Gill , Lucy Letby had also raised a concern on the Datex system about a line being left uncapped by one of the doctors. Also the Guardian reported that a mother who had had a cesarean at the unit in September 2015 raised a complaint .theguardian.com/uk-news…. I will therefore follow up my FOI to find out why the Countess of Chester have told me there were ‘zero concerns raised’ . It doesn’t seem lessons are being learned since little Olly Stopforth has now died unnecessarily due to negligence in 2020 with zero help from Lucy Letby chesterstandard.co.uk/n…