The long-running Scottish Hospitals Inquiry has uncovered a litany of failures in the design, construction and operation of the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) campus in Glasgow, which includes the Royal Hospital for Children. The inquiry, set up in 2019 after a series of patient deaths and high infection rates, has heard from 186 witnesses and painted a damning picture of what went wrong.
In a dramatic U-turn, the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) health board now accepts that the water system “more likely than not” caused a number of infections at the children’s hospital between 2016 and 2018. This contradicts the board’s earlier position that infection rates were not abnormally high.
The health board also acknowledges that many aspects of the hospital’s design, construction and commissioning were flawed, and that it did not receive the building it had asked for and paid £90 million for. It accepts there was poor supervision of contractors and a lack of in-house expertise to manage such a complex project.
Crucially, the board admits the hospital campus was opened to patients in 2015 before it was ready, with 200 contractors still on site and staff under extreme pressure. For example, there were no HEPA filters fitted in the wards treating children with cancer and blood disorders, something the board says “should not have happened”.
While the health board now says both hospitals on the QEUH campus are safe, with enhanced water testing and air monitoring, the inquiry’s lawyers dispute this. They argue some wards may still be unsafe for high-risk groups due to ongoing ventilation issues, which the board claims can be managed through other measures.
The inquiry has also heard damning evidence about the treatment of whistleblowers, such as microbiologist Teresa Inkster, who repeatedly raised the alarm about water supply and ventilation problems before the scandal became public. The health board admits this was “unfair” and that whistleblowers were not listened to, something the new chief executive has already apologised for.
Ultimately, the inquiry’s legal team concludes that the hospital’s built environment, particularly the water and ventilation systems, did make a material contribution to bloodstream infections among young patients between 2016 and late 2020. They are highly critical of the health board’s internal culture and failure to properly investigate staff concerns raised from as early as 2015.
With two bereaved families also providing powerful testimony about the human impact, this inquiry has laid bare a litany of failures that led to unnecessary suffering and loss of life. The Scottish government has promised action to implement the inquiry’s recommendations and improve health board governance, but the damage done will take time to heal.
