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17 hours ago
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Police investigating dozens of deaths at an NHS trust are examining possible corporate and individual manslaughter charges, the Guardian can reveal, as bereaved families call for the executive team to resign.
Sussex police are investigating a growing number of cases of alleged cover-up and avoidable harm, including at least 40 deaths, in the general surgery and neurosurgery departments of University hospitals Sussex NHS trust.
Officers have told those whose loved ones’ cases are being examined that the focus of investigation has two strands: corporate and individual manslaughter.
Sussex police have confirmed that potential offences being investigated are manslaughter by gross negligence and corporate manslaughter by gross negligence.
Operation Bramber, as it is known, is investigating alleged medical negligence and cover-up between 2015 and 2021, and has twice expanded to now include a reported 200 cases. The family of a man who died last year have been told by police that his case will also be examined because alleged failures in his care occurred around 2019.
In June 2023 the Guardian revealed that police were investigating the trust over allegations of medical negligence made by two consultant surgeons who say they lost their jobs after blowing the whistle about patient safety.
The trust, which has hospitals across Sussex including in Brighton and Worthing, has since been subject to a series of damning inspection reports, had the highest number of patients waiting a year and a half for care in England, and was last week ranked among the five worst trusts in England.
Now a Facebook group of 85 families whose loved ones died or were seriously harmed after alleged medical negligence at the trust have called for the leadership team to resign.
A letter sent to the executive team accuses them of presiding over “unacceptably poor health services”, a failure to investigate allegedly botched operations and “bullying” internal whistleblowers who raised the alarm.
It cites a surgeon who allegedly assaulted two registrars during operations, another surgeon who was reported to have used a Swiss army penknife during an operation, and a Royal College of Surgeons report that highlighted “bullying” and a “culture of fear”.
The letter also asks why allegedly negligent surgeons who are under investigation by Operation Bramber are still being allowed to operate at the trust. They include at least two surgeons who are currently suspended, or prevented from doing complex surgery, at local private hospitals.
The letter says: “We have no confidence in the current leadership and call for the resignation of the senior executive team immediately so that patients and their families served by the Trust can see action being taken and some confidence restored.”
The letter was coordinated by Charlotte Smart, whose mother was left paralysed after surgery in 2021. Signatories included Audrey Sharma, whose husband was left severely disabled in April 2020 after he was misdiagnosed as having a grade 4 tumour requiring an immediate operation.
Sharma said: “There has been bad news after bad news. If it was a school or a local authority it would be taken over, but that doesn’t seem to happen in the NHS. At what point does the level of death and damage become so unacceptable that someone intervenes?”
Simon Chilcott, whose son, Lewis, died in July 2021 after an alleged error in a tracheostomy led to infection and a fatal arterial haemorrhage, also signed the letter. He said: “There are so many things that keep coming out about this trust. They can’t keep sweeping this under the carpet.”
Chilcott has personally told the trust’s chief executive, George Findlay, that he will continue to campaign until he and the leadership team are replaced. “This letter has come out of frustration to demand that Findlay and co must go,” Chilcott said.
Findlay and his predecessor, Marianne Griffiths, were previously praised by the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt for creating “perhaps the best learning culture I saw anywhere in the NHS”.
In a statement, Sussex police said: “Individual cases have started to be reviewed by specialist consultant surgeons, commissioned to provide expert medical opinion. The consultants are totally independent of University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust and have undergone a nationally accepted vetting process.”
The trust has been approached for comment.
