Role in the case
As HR Director, Hodkinson had responsibility for the personnel-management decisions that structured the Trust’s response to the cluster: the reassignment of Ms Letby to clerical duties in June 2016 (after further deaths in that month), the subsequent apology-letter sequence in which consultants were pressured to apologise to Ms Letby, and the grievance-management framework within which the September 2016 joint letter was then handled. Her Thirlwall evidence addresses these decisions in documentary detail.
The apology-letter sequence
The apology-letter sequence is documented as a principal institutional-failure finding the Thirlwall Inquiry will address. Consultants who had raised concerns were pressured to sign letters of apology to Ms Letby as part of the Trust’s HR handling of the dispute. The Thirlwall evidence identifies the specific HR-management role in this sequence.
The HR-versus-clinical dimension of institutional failure
The Letby case illustrates a structural tension that has appeared in other NHS serious-incident failures: the point at which a clinical safeguarding concern is reclassified by management as a workplace-relations problem. Once the executive team responded to the September 2016 consultant letter through HR mechanisms rather than clinical-governance or safeguarding frameworks, the logic of HR — fairness to the employee, due process, proportionality, avoidance of constructive dismissal — displaced the logic of patient safety. Hodkinson’s role placed her at the centre of that displacement.
The Thirlwall Inquiry’s terms of reference address the adequacy of the Trust’s safeguarding procedures and the decisions taken by individual executives. The HR-management dimension — who recommended the apology-letter process, on what legal or procedural basis, and how the grievance framework was used — is within scope. Hodkinson’s Thirlwall evidence is therefore directly relevant to the Inquiry’s institutional-failure findings. For the structural analysis, see doctor-nurse power dynamics.
The June 2016 reassignment decision
In June 2016, following further deaths on the unit, Letby was reassigned to a non-patient-facing clerical role in the risk and patient-safety office. That decision — while superficially responsive to the consultants’ concerns — was not accompanied by a police referral, a formal safeguarding report, or notification to the relevant regulators. The HR framing of the reassignment as a precautionary welfare measure rather than a disciplinary or safeguarding action shaped how the Trust subsequently managed the situation. Hodkinson’s role in structuring and documenting that reassignment is evidentially important: the terms on which it was made, whether it was accompanied by any formal investigation, and when and why Letby was allowed to return to clinical duties are all questions the Thirlwall evidence addresses.
The consultant grievance and the Letby grievance in parallel
A distinctive feature of the Trust’s HR management in 2016-2017 was that two grievance processes were running in parallel: the consultants’ concerns about patient safety (which had been translated into a workplace-conduct matter concerning their allegations against Letby) and Letby’s own grievance about her treatment by the Trust. Hodkinson’s evidence to Thirlwall addresses how those parallel processes were managed, the extent to which the legal and HR advisers shaping the consultants’ process were also aware of Letby’s grievance, and whether the outcome — the consultants’ apology letters — was in any way shaped by the desire to resolve Letby’s grievance without conceding a safeguarding failure. Read alongside the profile of Alison Kelly, whose nursing-executive role intersected with the HR-management decisions.
Read alongside
- Tony Chambers — former CEO
- Ian Harvey — former Medical Director
- Alison Kelly — former Director of Nursing
- Analysis: the apology-letter sequence
- Analysis: doctor-nurse power dynamics
Source
Thirlwall Inquiry evidence bundles; Countess of Chester HR records; contemporaneous UK broadsheet coverage.