Nottingham maternity inquiry exposes simple truth – the NHS is failing women

The report of the Nottingham maternity inquiry, published on Wednesday, makes for harrowing reading.

The review includes 520 cases involving babies and mothers who died or suffered catastrophic harm as a result of care failings at maternity units under the Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) NHS Trust.

Failings were “hauntingly consistent” for more than a decade, said Donna Ockenden, the senior midwife who led the inquiry, with “concerns suppressed, incidents downgraded, and the voices of women, particularly the most vulnerable, systematically dismissed”. Women and staff were bullied and gaslit, with some told they were imagining their pain.

The damning assessment continues throughout 400 pages of heartbreaking detail. But at the core of the report is the message that the NHS has once again failed to take proper care of women.

The Nottingham inquiry is the fifth major review of maternity failings in the UK since the 2015 report into Morecambe Bay Hospitals. Next week, another government-commissioned rapid national review of maternity services at 14 NHS trusts is due to be published, amid concerns about the overall treatment of women and babies in these settings.

And another two inquiries, also led by Ockenden, will take place into suspected maternal failings at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust. The Nottingham scandal is, quite clearly, not an isolated case – and the report is a scathing indictment of the poor maternity care given to thousands of women across the country.

The common thread running through all of these reports is the institutional failure by the NHS to listen to women or prioritise their safety and, as a result, the safety of their babies.

As the report said, “Listening to women is not simply an important principle of maternity care; it is its foundation.”

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Source: The Independent, 24 June 2026