Grieving parents whose infants passed away while in Leeds Teaching Hospitals' care As the NHS Trust enters 2026, it has lost its chief executive, deputy chief executive, long-time board chair, and the head of the national regulator who previously oversaw the same organization, raising serious concerns about the institution's stability that are now the focus of a significant independent investigation.

The independent inquiry into maternity services at Leeds Teaching Hospitals was ordered by Health Secretary Wes Streeting in October after a BBC investigation indicated that the deaths of at least 56 babies and two mothers between January 2019 and July 2024 may have been preventable with better care. The maternity facilities of Leeds General Infirmary and St James's University Hospital were classified as "inadequate" by the Care Quality Commission in June 2025 due to a culture that discouraged employees from voicing concerns, inadequate incident reporting, and risks of preventable injury.

The investigation is now chaired by senior midwife Donna Ockenden, who is simultaneously overseeing a parallel inquiry into hundreds of deaths and injuries in Nottingham. The review is expected to cover stillbirths, neonatal deaths, serious incidents, hypoxic injuries, and maternal deaths over a fifteen-year period from January 2011 to December 2025.

The scale of leadership change at the trust in the months surrounding that announcement has unsettled families. In July 2025, Chief Executive Professor Phil Wood announced he would retire at the end of the year after more than thirty years in the NHS, having held the role since February 2023. The deputy chief executive of the trust also announced his resignation within two weeks. The board chair, Dame Linda Pollard, left at the end of her permitted term in August 2025, after twelve years in the position. Then, days after the inquiry was announced, Sir Julian Hartley resigned as chief executive of the Care Quality Commission, citing concern that his decade leading Leeds Teaching Hospitals, from 2013 to 2023, had made his regulatory role "incompatible with the important conversations happening about care at Leeds."

By December, the trust had paused its search for a new permanent chief executive, citing a need for "a much-needed period of stability." Currently serving as chief executive is Brendan Brown, who arrived from Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust in September 2025.

Families have not separated the question of leadership from the question of accountability. Fiona Wisner-Ramm and her husband Daniel, whose daughter Aliona died 27 minutes after birth in 2020 following what a subsequent inquest found were gross failures in her care, were among the lead campaigners for the inquiry. Families said they had "lost faith and confidence" in the Health Secretary's handling of the inquiry process in a letter delivered to Downing Street and signed by six MPs from three parties. They also called an earlier public announcement "nothing less than a complete betrayal of their trust." The letter urged the Prime Minister to take direct action in order to designate Ockenden as the head of the Leeds review; this request was ultimately fulfilled in March 2026.

Regardless of whether they are still employed by the NHS, patient groups and solicitors have pushed for departing administrators to continue being formally accountable to the investigation. 

Sir Julian said he would give "whatever support I can to the inquiry into maternity services at Leeds, so families get the transparency and answers that they need and deserve." Whether such voluntary commitments translate into formal obligations under the inquiry's terms of reference remains to be confirmed.

Brown stated that the trust is "absolutely committed to working openly, honestly and transparently with Donna Ockenden and the review team, and with families," and he was hopeful that the appointment of a chair will reassure families that the probe could move forward. In order to bolster its board, the trust hired two new non-executive directors in November, recognising that the previous months had brought about "significant changes to the senior leadership."

The pattern at Leeds is not unique. The Leeds probe coincides with the current Nottingham review, in which Ockenden is looking at some 2,500 incidents of alleged subpar care. This procedure has already resulted in a separate police investigation and tens of millions of pounds in NHS settlements. In both cases, the period of greatest institutional crisis has coincided with the departure of senior figures rather than their retention. For the families at Leeds, the question now is not whether an inquiry will take place, but whether the individuals who oversaw the years under review will be required to give a full account of them.

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