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 executives did not contact police until May 2017.
A note on this page. We have not been able to locate the letter this page is named for. The Thirlwall Inquiry’s evidence library holds a letter from the consultants to Tony Chambers dated 10 February 2017 and one to Sir Duncan Nichol dated 29 March 2018, but no joint letter of September 2016. What the September 2016 record does hold, on the Inquiry transcripts, is correspondence from individual consultants — Dr Jayaram emailed colleagues on 9 September 2016 after meeting Ian Harvey, and sent a long email on 20 September 2016. Until the document can be produced we are not summarising it, and the date in this page’s title should be treated as unconfirmed. The escalation itself is not in doubt; it is well evidenced on the pages linked below.
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.