The Department of Health and Social Care has appointed Donna Ockenden to chair the independent review into Sussex maternity and neonatal services. The review follows concerns raised by harmed and bereaved families about the safety of care linked to University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust. According to the department, the appointment follows months of engagement between the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, and Sussex families who have been pressing for an external investigation. In March 2026, Streeting met a small group of relatives and local MPs and committed to appointing an independent chair and agreeing the review's scope at pace.
Ockenden's appointment gives the Sussex review a chair with an established record in maternity investigations. She previously led the review into Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust and is already overseeing reviews at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and, since March 2026, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. That background matters because the Sussex review is being framed around both fact-finding and service improvement. Ockenden said her immediate priority would be to hear directly from harmed and bereaved families, engage with staff across Sussex, and make sure families whose experiences are often missed by formal processes are included.
The Truth for Our Babies campaign group described the decision as an important step after a two-year campaign, but it also made clear that the main policy question is still unresolved. In its account of discussions with ministers, the group argued that a review which excludes some harmed and bereaved families would miss lessons and weaken accountability. The next formal stage is therefore the terms of reference. They will decide which services and periods are examined, how evidence is gathered, and whether the review is broad enough to test whether poor outcomes reflected isolated failings or repeated problems in governance, staffing, escalation and response.
That emphasis on scope matters in practice. A narrowly drawn review can answer questions about individual cases; a wider review is better placed to identify recurring safety issues, leadership problems and failures in how concerns were handled. The department has signalled that it wants a thorough examination of care, with improvements made while the review is under way rather than only after publication of a final report. For families, the test will not be the appointment alone but whether the process produces a clear account of what happened, where responsibility for action sat and what must change. For the trust and the wider NHS, the review adds another layer of accountability focused on patient safety, candour and whether earlier warnings translated into operational action.
The Sussex review also sits within a broader maternity safety programme set out by ministers since July 2024. The Department of Health and Social Care says the programme has included the recruitment of an extra 2,000 midwives, more than £149 million for 122 infrastructure projects across 49 NHS trusts to improve neonatal facilities, and a new programme aimed at the two leading causes of avoidable brain injury during labour. The department has also pointed to Martha's Rule pilots in maternity and neonatal units in 14 trusts across six regions, work to reduce stillbirths, neonatal brain injury, neonatal death and preterm birth, a perinatal culture and leadership programme, midwife retention schemes and the Graduate Guarantee. It has paired those measures with expanded maternal mental health services, the extension of Baby Loss Certificates to historic losses, guidance on major causes of maternal death, an anti-discrimination programme and an NHS England inequalities dashboard.
Alongside Sussex, ministers have commissioned a national maternity investigation chaired by Baroness Amos to produce a single set of recommendations for England. Streeting has also said he will chair a National Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce intended to turn investigation findings into implementation, and in March 2026 he appointed Ockenden to lead a further independent review at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. Taken together, those decisions show the government building a national structure around local investigations, national recommendations and ministerial follow-through. In Sussex, however, the immediate issue is more specific: publication of a scope that families regard as complete enough to establish the facts, identify where accountability sits and support earlier corrective action.