Dr Minh Alexander retired consultant psychiatrist 27 February 2026
This is a post to share a BBC item from yesterday.
Amanda Ford is a senior nurse and midwife who had a distinguished and unblemished career dating back to the days of pre-CQC, rigorous NHS regulation.
HSIB were lucky to recruit her as an investigator in their maternity programme, where she worked from 2019. Her experience and skills soon told as she identified care quality and governance failings in maternity services at Yeovil Hospital. But she then also became troubled by HSIB’s responses to her concerns.
She was not alone as other HSIB staff also had concerns about HSIB’s maternity investigations and they experienced problems raising concerns, as was revealed by internal and external reviews. Multiple, unnamed HSIB staff whistleblew to the media previously, but the significantly critical reports remained suppressed from public view. It required a later FOI process to release the reports.
Amanda eventually quit HSIB and lodged an Employment Tribunal claim for constructive dismissal in which she represented herself as a litigant in person, against the full resources of the NHS. This litigation did not succeed, but internal NHS processes upheld most of her grievances and recognised that she should have been treated as a whistleblower, which she clearly was.
Her concerns are sadly fully vindicated as years later, Yeovil Hospital is now one of the sites under a national investigation for maternity failings:
Secretary of State’s announcement 23 June 2025 of the national investigation
Information about the national investigation including methodology and terms of reference
The timeline of events at Yeovil illustrates how valuable whistleblower intelligence is, if only the NHS has the maturity to respond to it constructively, to prevent unnecessary harm and suffering to patients and their families.
BBC Points West has now covered these issues. Health Correspondent Matthew Hill interviewed Amanda Ford for a broadcast yesterday. Amanda has also received an apology from the trust if not from her former employer.
This is a link to the broadcast:
These are some of the key passages from the BBC interview:
MH: “……She [AF] told me that if she been listened to properly then this service may well have closed and harm to other babies may have been prevented
AF: “…Within a month I just was appalled. There was a baby death. That’s a death that shouldn’t have occurred….And there was a lady who was put through labour…she’s lucky to have survived that and her baby survived…it was just appalling care”
MH: “…The hospital didn’t always want to hear what she had to say…”.
AF: “…there wasn’t enough consultant oversight or consultant ward rounds…not enough escalation…locums that didn’t seem to be orientated or supervised …didn’t seem to be prepared for emergencies or things going wrong…in obstetrics and maternity, things go rapidly wrong…a feeling of defensiveness to the concerns that I was raising”
MH: “…Amanda says she tried to feed back the problems she saw at Yeovil but felt the hospital and HSIB were too close.”
MH: “…..Do you think HSIB is fit for purpose?”
AF: “No I don’t. I don’t think they got it. And if that was happening in Yeovil, where else was it happening in the country?”
MH: “So she left HSIB feeling it wasn’t challenging the trust enough. She lost her case for constructive dismissal at an Employment Tribunal but did win most of her grievances in HSIB’s internal process. An independent report found she should have been treated as an HSIB whistleblower.”
AF: “It validated the fact that I was whistleblowing…also this piece was about the culture within HSIB. There was also a bullying culture”
MH: “How did that leave you?”
AF: “Destroyed”
MH: “Had you been listened to, would the unit still be open today, functioning safely?”
AF: “There would have had to have been a process where CQC would have gone in sooner. And HSIB would have escalated sooner.”
MH: “The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch no longer exists. Its successors declined to comment. Yeovil said they strive to have an open and safe culture and acknowledge they didn’t always get this right.”
AF: “I ended up very unwell because of what I’d been put through, from not being listened to, and that moral injury as many NHS whistleblowers will realise… for doing my job and being honest.”
BBC Points West: “It must have been so hard for Amanda to speak out”
MH: “Yes, I was first in touch with Amanda a year ago, but it took her several months to decide to speak out because she was worried about the potential consequences of doing that. Now given her experience of not being listened to, and then resigning as a result, it’s a shame her former employer didn’t want to comment. But remarkably the hospital here has put up its hands and said “sorry””
Apology by Dr Melanie Iles, Chief Medical Officer since April 2024, on behalf of Somerset NHS Foundation Trust:
“I’m really sorry that Amanda wasn’t listened to and that she’s been put in this difficult situation. I’m passionate that for really high quality care we need to be listening to women, we need to be listening to our staff and acting on what we’re hearing. And I’m really sorry that on occasions that hasn’t happened, and those actions haven’t been taken or quickly enough.”
The BBC has also published an article touching on Amanda’s story:
NHS investigator says maternity unit care ‘appalling’ 26 February 2026
RELATED ITEMS
These are previous posts relevant to HSIB’s serious failures of maternity investigation, NHS England’s cover ups and the arising investigations into these matters and Amanda Ford’s case, and a related item about previous HSIB leadership by Keith Conradi who was parachuted into the NHS from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB):
HSIB whistleblowers and the Secret King’s Fund Fact Lite report
More secret HSIB reports and failures of HSIB maternity investigations
Alexander's Excavations 