Bolton NHS Foundation Trust has paid out more than £24.5m in damages for failings leading to cerebral palsy in the last 11 years, new figures have shown. A freedom of information (FOI) request submitted to NHS Resolution by Lime Solicitors showed that between the financial years 2012/13 and 2022/23, five NHS trusts in Greater Manchester settled a total of 80 clinical negligence claims related to cerebral palsy.
In total, the five trusts - Bolton, Northern Care Alliance, Manchester University, Stockport, and Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh - paid out £181,383,412 in damages, an average of £2.2 million per case, and £29,519,408 in legal fees. Of these figures, Bolton NHS Foundation Trust was responsible for 12 claims, which resulted in nearly £24.
7m in damages being paid. Additionally, the trust paid more than £950,000 in NHS legal costs and more than £3m in covering claimant legal costs. Tyrone Roberts, Chief Nursing Officer at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The safety of patients is always our highest priority, and we take any case that falls below our high standards extremely seriously.
“Hearing the experiences of our patients is vital in enabling us to create change and improvements that make a real difference to the care we provide for Bolton’s communities.” Figures from the FOI also showed that nationally one in every 14 cerebral palsy cases could have been avoided over the past 11 years, with trusts across the country paying out a total of £3.5bn in da.
