Nottingham maternity scandal: Families still tell of ‘poor care’ a year after review launched
Families are still coming forward with stories of poor care a year after an independent review was launched into maternity services at a scandal-hit NHS trust.
More than 1,700 cases of possible harm to newborn babies and mothers are being examined at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust over a 10-year period.
The investigation is led by midwife Donna Ockenden, who led a similar review into maternity care at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust. In 2022 she concluded that catastrophic failures there may have led to the deaths of more than 200 babies.
Solicitor Natalie Cosgrove, who is representing a number of Nottingham families, told Sky News that she had been contacted by people concerned about their care “as recently as March this year”.
Natalie Cosgrove, a medical negligence partner at Ashtons Legal, is representing families
“Things may be improving as far as the trust would like to say reputationally but I’m not seeing it myself,” she said.
“Those at the top, many appear to be well-meaning, want to improve care, want to show change, but I’m yet to see that filter down.
“That’s not scaremongering, this is a cry to those senior members to listen to your staff, listen to families, recent families coming forward and take them seriously.”
Bereaved parents had campaigned for an investigation into maternity care at Nottingham City Hospital and the Queen’s Medical Centre for years, and have formed a support group to help others.
Teddy was a day old when he died after he and his mother, Kim Errington, were discharged from Nottingham City Hospital
In 2020, Kim Errington lost her son Teddy, aged just one day old after they were discharged from Nottingham City Hospital.
“Teddy was small for his gestational age when he was born at 41 weeks,” she said. “He should have automatically triggered the hypoglycemic monitoring pathway which meant he should have had his bloods checked, he should have had monitored feeds, he should have been kept in and closely monitored for 24 to 48 hours.”
The trust has admitted a “breach of duty” and that his death could have been avoided.
Kim has since given birth to a baby daughter, Elfi, at a different trust.
Kim Errington with her daughter Elfi
“He’ll never be gone,” Kim said. “If I didn’t have Elfi I’d be a very different person, in a very different place. I’m so grateful she’s here and healthy but it doesn’t eradicate what happened.”
In a statement given to Sky News, Anthony May, chief executive of Nottingham University Hospitals, said: “We know that the independent review is important for women and families, and for the future of the trust.
“Over the past year, we have prioritised our engagement with the review and will continue to do so.
“Above all, we are committed to making the necessary improvements to our maternity services, and supporting our teams to deliver safe and informed care, for all women and families.”
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He added: “We work closely with the review team led by Donna Ockenden and meet regularly with the team to listen to the feedback, respond accordingly and inform our improvement plan.
“We are determined to fulfil the commitment we made in July to an open and honest relationship with the families involved in the review and all women and families within our maternity services.
“We still have a long way to go but we are making sustainable progress in a number of areas to benefit the safety and wellbeing of women, families and staff as part of our Maternity Improvement Programme.
“We are focused on learning from incidents, improving our culture and communicating more effectively with women and families that use our services.”
Dr Jack and Sarah Hawkins, and their daughter Lottie
Dr Jack Hawkins was a consultant at the trust in 2016 when his daughter Harriet was stillborn. Initially the family was told that she had died of an infection but they successfully pushed for an independent investigation.
They received a £2.8m payout from the NHS after 13 failures in care were found. Harriet’s death was described as “almost certainly preventable”.
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Dr Hawkins told Sky News that Nottingham Hospitals Maternity Family Support Group was being contacted by patients who had “trouble in the last few weeks” at the trust and that due to the volume of work, the Ockenden report could take a further 12 months to publish findings.
“What I hope for is that people will be held to account, that people who haven’t been held to account will see there’s consequences in lying, of poor care, of not doing the right things, and that it will change,” he said.
A foreign sex offender freed in error from Wandsworth prison has been arrested – as Sky News filmed the moment he was detained.
Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, a 24-year-old Algerian national, was mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth in south London on 29 October.
Sky News approached Kaddour-Cherif moments before his arrest in Finsbury Park, north London, at 11.30am, but he claimed to be someone else.
He was then approached by officers next to a police van and arrested.
One of the officers said Kaddour-Cherif had been identified as the missing prisoner because he had a “distinctive wonky nose”.
Sky News witnessed Brahim Kaddour-Cherif’s arrest
Officers held his arrest picture next to Kaddour-Cherif’s head to confirm his identity
In the footage, the Algerian was shown shouting to people standing nearby in the street.
An officer then held up a photo of Kaddour-Cherif on a phone, comparing the image to the man arrested.
When officers asked him whether he knew why he was being arrested, Kaddour-Cherif replied: “I don’t know.”
Kaddour-Cherif, who was wearing a grey hoodie, black beanie and black backpack, said the mix-up at the prison was the fault of the authorities who released him.
“It’s not my f***ing fault”, Kaddour-Cherif shouted.
Kaddour-Cherif shouted at bystanders as officers arrested him
Kaddour-Cherif claimed to be someone else when he was arrested
The Prison Service informed the Metropolitan Police about the error six days later – and a huge manhunt for him was launched.
It is not yet clear why it was nearly a week between the release at HMP Wandsworth and the police being informed that an offender was at large.
“At 11.23am on Friday, 7 November, a call was received from a member of the public reporting a sighting of a man they believed to be Brahim Kaddour-Cherif in the vicinity of Capital City College on Blackstock Road in Islington,” a Met Police spokesperson said.
“Officers responded immediately and at 11.30am detained a man matching Cherif’s description. His identity was confirmed and he was arrested for being unlawfully at large.
“He was also arrested on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker in relation to a previous unrelated incident. He has been taken into police custody. The Prison Service has been informed.”
Kaddour-Cherif shouted it was ‘not my f***ing fault’ that he was mistakenly released
Kaddour-Cherif is a registered sex offender who was convicted of indecent exposure in November last year, following an incident in March.
At the time, he was given a community order and placed on the sex offenders register for five years.
He was then subsequently jailed for possessing a knife in June.
He was wrongly freed from Wandsworth prison. Pic: Met Police
Kaddour-Cherif came to the UK legally and is not an asylum seeker, but it is understood he overstayed his visit visa and deportation proceedings had been started.
He was accidentally freed five days after the wrongful release of convicted sex offender Hadush Kebatu. Both Kaddour-Cherif and Kebatu were arrested in Finsbury Park.
A third man, fraudster William Smith, 35, was mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth on 3 November, but turned himself in on Thursday.
After Kaddour-Cherif’s arrest, Justice Secretary David Lammy admitted there was a “mountain to climb” to tackle the crisis in the prison system.
“We inherited a prison system in crisis and I’m appalled at the rate of releases in error this is causing,” he said.
“I’m determined to grip this problem, but there is a mountain to climb which cannot be done overnight.
“That is why I have ordered new tough release checks, commissioned an independent investigation into systemic failures, and begun overhauling archaic paper-based systems still used in some prisons.”
A young woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann has been convicted of harassing the missing toddler’s family.
However, Julia Wandelt, 24, was cleared of stalking the couple.
A Polish national born three years after Madeleine, Wandelt said she suspected she had been abducted and brought up by a couple who were not her real parents.
She was having mental health issues at the time and had been abused by an elderly relative.
The relative looked like an artist’s drawing of a man who was once a suspect in the Madeleine case, which she stumbled across during internet research on missing children.
She went to Los Angeles and told a US TV chat show audience: “I believe I am Madeleine McCann.”
Madeleine was nearly four when she vanished from the family’s rented holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in May 2007.
She had been left sleeping with her younger twin siblings, Sean and Amelia, while her parents dined nearby with friends, making intermittent checks on the children.
Madeleine is the world’s most famous missing child, the subject of three international police investigations that have failed to find any trace of her.
Wandelt claimed to have a blemish in the iris of her right eye, like Madeleine’s, and to resemble aged-progressed images of her.
Madeleine McCann went missing during a family holiday to Portugal in 2007. Pic: PA
Over three years, she attracted half a million followers on her Instagram account, iammadeleinemccan, and posted her claims on TikTok.
Police told her she was not Madeleine and ordered her not to approach her family, but she ignored the warning.
The McCanns and their children gave evidence in the trial at Leicester Crown Court, describing the upset Wandelt had caused them.
Her co-defendant, Karen Spragg, 61, from Cardiff, was found not guilty of stalking and harassment.
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Public safety is “at risk” because more inmates are being sent to prisons with minimal security, a serving governor has warned – as details emerge of another manhunt for a foreign national offender.
Mark Drury – speaking in his role as representative for open prison governors at the Prison Governors’ Association – told Sky News open prisons that have had no absconders for “many years” are now “suddenly” experiencing a rise in cases.
It comes after a man who was serving a 21-year sentence for kidnap and grievous bodily harm absconded from an open prison in Sussex last month.
Sky News has learned that Ola Abimbola is a foreign national offender who still hasn’t returned to HMP Ford – and Sussex Police says it is working with partners to find him.
WARNING: Some readers may find the content in this article distressing
Ola Abimbola absconded from an open prison. Pic: Sussex Police
For Natalie Queiroz, who was stabbed 24 times by her ex-partner while she was eight months’ pregnant with their child, the warnings could not feel starker.
Natalie sustained injuries to all her major organs and her arms, while the knife only missed her unborn baby by 2mm.
“Nobody expected either of us to survive,” she told Sky News.
Babur Raja was sentenced to 18 years for attempted murder, but Natalie has recently been told that he’s set to be moved to an open prison four years earlier than planned.
“Any day now, my ex who created this untold horror is about to go to an open prison,” Natalie said.
Open prisons – otherwise known as Category D jails – have minimal security and are traditionally used to house prisoners right at the end of their sentence, to prepare them for integrating back into society.
With overcrowding in higher security jails, policy changes mean more prisoners are eligible for a transfer to open conditions earlier on in their sentence.
Natalie Queiroz was stabbed 24 times by her ex-partner
“It doesn’t feel right, it’s terrifying, and it also doesn’t feel like justice,” Natalie said, wiping away tears at points.
Previously, rules stated a transfer to open prison could only take place within three years of their eligibility for parole – but no earlier than five years before their automatic release date.
The five-year component was dropped in March last year under the previous government, but the parole eligibility element was extended to five years in April 2025.
Raja, who is due for release in 2034, has parole eligibility 12 years into his sentence, which is 2028.
Under the rule change, this eligibility for open prison is set for this year – but under the new rules it could have been 2023, which is within five years of his parole date.
Another change, introduced in the spring, means certain offenders can be assumed suitable for open prisons three years early – extended from two years.
Natalie says her ex-partner Babur Raja caused ‘untold horror’
Natalie has been campaigning to prevent violent offenders and domestic abuse perpetrators from being eligible to transfer to an open prison early.
She’s had meetings with ministers and raised both her case and others.
“They actually said – he is dangerous,” she told Sky News.
“I said to [the minister]: ‘How can you make a risk assessment for someone like that?’
“And they went: ‘If we’re honest, we can’t’.”
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What’s wrong with our prisons?
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The government told Sky News that Raja’s crimes were “horrific” and that their “thoughts remain with the victim”.
They also insist that the “small number of offenders eligible for moves to open prison face a strict, thorough risk assessment” – while anyone breaking the rules “can be immediately returned”.
Mark Drury, a representative of the Prison Governors’ Association
But Mr Drury describes risk assessments as an “algorithm tick box” because of “the pressure on offender management units”.
These warnings come at an already embarrassing time for the Prison Service after migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu was mistakenly freed last month.
This week, it emerged two others have been freed in error since then, amid new release checks.
In response to this report, the Ministry of Justice says it “inherited a justice system in crisis, with prisons days away from collapse” – forcing “firm action to get the situation back under control”.
The government has promised to add 14,000 new prison places by 2031 and introduce sentencing reforms.
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