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Lucy Letby Facts
Editorial summary (not a verbatim transcript)
September 2016·Consultant paediatricians, Countess of Chester Hospital

Consultants' letter to executives demanding police involvement (September 2016)

The September 2016 letter from seven consultant paediatricians to the Trust's executive team demanding that Cheshire Police be contacted about the cluster of unexpected deaths on the neonatal unit. Entered as an exhibit at the Thirlwall Inquiry. The executives did not contact police until May 2017 — nearly eight months later. This letter is the single clearest contemporaneous document showing what clinical staff knew and were asking for.

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Editorial summary — not a verbatim transcript.

This page is a summary written for this site. It is not a mirror of the primary document, and nothing on it should be quoted as the words of any person. An earlier version of this page carried quotations that could not be verified against the primary record; those have been removed. For the underlying record, consult the primary source at thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk. See our corrections policy.

Status: Editorial summary written for this site — not a mirrored document

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Context

In September 2016, seven consultant paediatricians at the Countess of Chester Hospital jointly wrote to the Trust’s executive team demanding that Cheshire Police be contacted about the cluster of unexpected deaths on the neonatal unit. The letter was exhibited at the Thirlwall Inquiry. The executives did not contact police until May 2017 — nearly eight months later. The document below is summarised from the exhibit; the full letter is available on the Thirlwall Inquiry site.

Summary of the letter

What to read alongside this

See Dr Brearey’s Thirlwall evidence and Tony Chambers’s Thirlwall evidence, which address the executive response to this letter.