Largest maternity review in NHS history to be published

Sarah and Jack Hawkins were one of the first families to raise the alarm about serious failings at the trust, after their daughter Harriet was stillborn at City Hospital in April 2016.

An initial hospital review found “no obvious fault”, and stated their child died of an infection but Sarah and Jack – who both worked for the trust – did not accept that and pushed for an external review.

The external review, which was published in January 2019, found a host of failings and concluded Harriet’s death was “almost certainly preventable”.

Jack, 57, who was a hospital consultant at the time Harriet died, said: “How on earth have we allowed it that there are 1,000 avoidable baby deaths in this country every year and, in a particular place, there are this many schools’ worth of children missing or damaged beyond belief, and dead mums and damaged mums?

“How have we got here?”

Sarah, 43, who was a senior physiotherapist at the trust, said: “It’s massive, because we worked there as well.

“We couldn’t go back to our careers, our jobs, everything. Every single aspect of life was changed.

“I know a lot of Nottingham families just want some form of justice, to clear their children’s name, to know that the harm that was caused wasn’t their fault.”

The pair previously told of how Harriet’s body had been allowed to decompose so badly by NUH, it had to be triple-bagged for her funeral.

The couple had their legal case against the trust settled out of court for £2.8m, believed to be the largest payout for a stillbirth clinical negligence case.