NHS paid out £101m over Nottingham maternity failings.

The NHS paid out tens of millions of pounds after maternity failings at a hospital trust which is the subject of a major inquiry.

A total of £101m, including legal fees, was paid in claims against Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) between 2006 and 2023. Claimants' legal fees amounted to £11m, and the trust's own solicitors were paid £5m. 

The NHS paid the money in relation to 134 cases involving failings at the Queen's Medical Centre (QMC) and City Hospital. The majority, £85m, was damages for families who were successful in proving their baby's death or injury was a result of medical negligence. 

One single mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, sued the trust after mistakes made during her son's care which left him with cerebral palsy.

She described her legal battle as a "laborious process" during which she felt she faced prejudice for taking the NHS to court.

She said: "Getting any sort of diagnosis when he was younger was a battle. As he got older, it became a thing that was brought up every time by professionals, that 'she is suing the NHS'."

It took more than 10 years for the case to be settled with a £6m one-off payment in the child's name, and annual future payments running into tens of millions during his lifetime.

The mother added: "It's not a choice. It's not because we wanted to. It's not something that I actively thought of, 'I'll get some money out of this'. He must have enough money so when I'm not here, which is going to happen, he is being taken care of.”

More than half of the payouts in Nottingham's maternity cases went into covering costs for babies born with cerebral palsy due to medical failings.

The NHS has paid out for 22 of such cases, amounting to £53.1m in legal fees and damages in the last 17 years. Stillbirth was the second highest figure at £4.6m, followed by successful claims of bowel damage (£3.4m), bladder damage (£2.2m) and fatality (£1.9m). 

Another family which took legal action against NUH also described a lengthy and difficult battle for compensation.

Jack and Sarah Hawkins's daughter, Harriet, died hours before she was delivered in April 2016 due to mistakes made at both the QMC and City hospitals.

Hospital managers initially found "no obvious fault" and the couple were told their child had died of an infection.

Dr Hawkins, who worked as a consultant at the trust, said: "It took the hospital a very long time. Way longer than safe to do a proper investigation."

The couple declined to accept the NUH findings and launched their own investigation, which identified 13 failings in care and determined Harriet's death was "almost certainly preventable."

Five years after they lost their baby, they received £2.8m, the largest compensation settlement in a stillbirth clinical negligence claim in NHS history.

Nottingham's maternity services are already the subject of an inquiry, with 1,800 families now involved in senior midwife, Donna Ockenden’s, review into the failings.

She told the BBC: "No amount of money can put lives back together to how they were before a baby was injured. I hear accounts of mothers having had to give up their jobs to become the sole carer, dads telling me that they are working 12, 14 hours a day so that they can be the sole breadwinner.

"Sleeping on the sofa at night so that they can care for the baby or child, and the mother can get some rest before her day starts again. When they come and talk to me, I can describe these families only as grey with exhaustion. So, behind the numbers are terrible, terrible stories of local families who have suffered so much.

"Mothers who thought they would go on and have a successful career outside the home have told me 'I had to give up work'. Some relationships don't make it through that extra pressure. I've met some families who come and see me separately. The sadness is just immense."

NUH chief executive, Anthony May, said: "I am truly sorry to all those families affected by failures in our maternity services. When things go wrong, it is important that there are processes in place to examine what happened, to make improvements and to support those affected.

"While money will never make up for the pain caused, we know how important it is for those who make a claim that we respond properly and in a way that does not cause additional suffering."