Lucy Letby’s hospital slammed for A&E failings over ‘unsafe’ corridor care that left elderly patients delirious

Lucy Letby’s hospital trust has been slammed for a string of emergency care failings, including unsafe corridor care that led to elderly patients developing delirium.

The Countess of Chester Hosptial, where Lucy Letby worked and was convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others, was criticised by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) over delays in the care of sepsis patients, as well as elderly patients who were left for so long that they developed “corridor-induced delirium”.

The hospital was also criticised for having “visibly dirty equipment” and out-of-date medical devices, including some with damaged wires hanging out.

The watchdog has handed the trust a formal warning notice over the failures identified after the CQC’s inspection in February 2025. Concerns included:

• Mental health patients being left with staff who were sleeping or on their phones.
• Patients with fractured hips are forced to sit in wheelchairs when they should have had beds.
• Inspectors found 59 incidents of delays to providing sepsis treatment, 44 of which were because the trust failed to take patients from ambulances quickly enough.
• Evidence that “long stays on the corridor” and the deterioration of patients because of this was “normalised”.

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Source: The Independent, 8 August 2025