NHS Trust loses 11 years of maternity record access logs in IT blunder
Nottingham hospitals unable to restore audit trail showing who viewed patient data after reused script overwrites legacy database.
What to know
- Nottingham University Hospitals lost 11 years of maternity record access logs (Sept 2011–Nov 2022) after a reused database script was run against the wrong system on August 18; patient care data was recovered but the audit trail showing who viewed records remains unrestorable.
- The incident complicates an ongoing police investigation (Operation Perth) into over 500 cases of potentially avoidable harm or death at the trust, with families concerned that lost records will hamper justice.
- The trust's explanation—a missed setting in a reused script—has drawn scrutiny from IT professionals questioning whether change management and testing protocols failed.
The dispute Whether the trust's account of a single missed setting is credible, or whether it masks deeper institutional failures in change management and backup oversight. · positions read across 7 posts and comments
The trust's explanation is vague and suggests possible cover-up; fundamental IT governance failures are evident.
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“the explanation they're giving doesn't make any sense…which still seems very vague and I question how legit it was (looks far more like a cover up); It also demonstrates a host of failures.”
SmoothConfection1115 · Reddit ↗
“I am sorry for the concern and distress this incident may cause to women and families affected.”
Andy Callow, NUH chief digital and information officer · Ars Technica ↗
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) Hospital operatorAndy Callow Chief digital and information officer, NUHNottinghamshire Police Investigating authorityNottingham Maternity Family Group Advocacy group for affected families
How it unfolded 1 development · click the chart to see its coverage articlespostscomments
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Nottingham Maternity Family Group calls data loss "extremely unnerving"
The advocacy group representing families affected by the broader maternity care scandal expressed concern that families already harmed by the trust were now facing additional complications from the lost audit records.
“Families who have already endured preventable harm, injury, and bereavement should not also have t…”
— Nottingham Maternity Family Group -
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Making a mistake this colossal was one of my worst fears when I worked IT. I was so careful.
2 more of the top 3 · 7 posts in this stretch
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I’m an IT auditor, and the explanation they’re giving doesn’t make any sense. Instructions from another system, a process should have been changed but was missed… That doesn’t make much sense, but could just be because most people may not understand the IT trail that would explain it…which still seems very vague and I question how legit it was…
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A situation I'm all too familiar with and why you need backups of backups IT mistake erases 11 years of viewing history for hospitals’ maternity records https:// arstechnica.com/information-te chnology/2026/09/it-mistake-erases-11-years-of-viewing-history-for-hospitals-maternity-records/ # IT # Data # Hospital # UK # TEch
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background
NUH announces data loss in blog post; police investigate impact on broader maternity inquiry — The trust publicly disclosed the August 18 incident via a blog post, confirming inability to restore access logs. Nottinghamshire Police assessed whether the loss impacts Operation Perth, the ongoing investigation into over 500 cases of potentially avoidable harm or death in the trust's maternity services. Deputy chief constable Rob Griffin stated no crime had been identified at that point.
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background
NUH escalates incident and begins recovery within minutes — The trust escalated the problem immediately upon discovery and engaged external specialists to recover data. Patient care information including notes, observations, and test results was successfully restored.
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background
Nottingham hospitals overwrite maternity database in IT error — During routine technical work to copy a radiotherapy database, staff ran a pre-written script against the wrong database, overwriting the trust's old Medway maternity records database containing data from September 2011 to November 2022. A setting that should have been changed before running the script was missed.
Also covered reported alongside — the timeline has no entry for these yet
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first by Mastodon, 1d ago · also Ars Technica
and 1 smaller piece
What people are saying 2 voices from 1 site · best of 7 · verbatim
- Why was a pre-written script used without being tested on the target database first?
- Why did the trust not catch this during change management review before running it on production?
- Were backups tested, and if so, why could the audit logs not be recovered from them?
- Sep 22
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Is this from the same country that destroyed huge numbers of people's lives and caused a couple deaths by the incompetent implementation of a postal IT system, that kept producing reports and data leading to accusations and prosecutions of postal outlet owners of enormous amounts of fraud - none of which actually occurred? I'm shocked I tell you…
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A few years ago, one of our exchange admins was building out a new cluster to prep for an upgrade... he ran a script to format the drives on the new servers then logged out for the day. Turns out that the script was broken and it formatted the drives on the production servers. By the time anyone noticed shit was broken, the changes had already…