Eight bodies were found in a state of advanced deterioration at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust after its mortuaries ran out of freezer space, according to an inspection report published this week by the Human Tissue Authority. Inspectors also identified gaps in identity checks that created a risk of the wrong body being released to a grieving family.

The findings relate to an unannounced inspection carried out in March at the Queen's Medical Centre and Nottingham City Hospital, the trust's two main sites. The authority recorded three critical shortfalls, six major shortfalls and one minor shortfall against its licensing standards. It concluded that long-term freezer storage at both hospitals was insufficient for the volume of bodies passing through the service, forcing staff to rely on refrigerated space and sealed bags in ways that compromised the condition and dignity of the deceased.

Some post-mortem examinations on babies were carried out in a laboratory that lacked adequate ventilation, staffed by workers who had not received mortuary training. A separate audit found that just over half of 145 incidents which should have been reported to the regulator were never escalated. The Human Tissue Authority did note that the trust met the majority of its standards overall, and that some improvements had already been made in the months since the inspection took place.

The report lands amid a wider reckoning over conditions at the trust. Donna Ockenden's independent review into maternity services at Nottingham, published the same week, described deeply embedded failures that harmed more than five hundred mothers and babies over close to two decades. Her findings cited a failure to comply with legal requirements around the care of the deceased, including inadequate arrangements for paediatric post-mortems. Nottinghamshire Police have also arrested two men, aged fifty-five and fifty-nine, on suspicion of misconduct in a public office in connection with mortuary operating practices. Both were released on bail with conditions attached. The arrests form part of Operation Perth, a police investigation opened in 2023 following earlier revelations about maternity care at the trust.

Concerns about the dignity and security of the dead in NHS mortuaries are not confined to Nottingham. The final report of the independent inquiry into the crimes of David Fuller, a mortuary technician convicted of abusing bodies at a Kent hospital trust, was published last July and made seventy-five recommendations, twenty-nine of which apply directly to the NHS. Among them was a call for a new, independent statutory regulator for organisations that care for the deceased, overseen by a chief inspector. NHS England has since written to every trust with a mortuary or body storage facility, asking chief executives, medical directors and chief nurses to submit a board-level assurance statement by the end of July confirming their compliance with revised national guidance.

Anthony May, chief executive of Nottingham University Hospitals, told the BBC the findings were "very disappointing" and said an action plan was already in place. He said he took responsibility for shortfalls that happened "on my watch" and apologised to anyone who felt the trust had failed to respect the dignity of their loved one. The trust has commissioned a separate, independent review of its mortuary services and says it is working with the regulator to address each of the shortfalls identified.

The Human Tissue Authority, which licenses more than eight hundred organisations across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said it would continue to monitor the trust closely and expected a further inspection in due course. For families still awaiting answers from the maternity review, the mortuary findings will do little to restore confidence. What happens next depends largely on whether the government's response to the Fuller recommendations translates into enforceable standards, rather than guidance that individual trusts can fail to meet without meaningful consequence.

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