The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) has hit back at claims that dozens more cases of poor care have been uncovered at a hospital’s maternity service.

The trust says the allegations made in the Health Service Journal are "factually incorrect and untrue."

The statement follows the publishing of a report from the Health Service Journal, which said that at least 60 separate cases including baby deaths, brain injuries, and at least four deaths of mothers, have now been identified at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals Trust.

The full statement from the Trust says:

"The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) is aware of reports in the media claiming that more cases have been 'uncovered'. This is factually incorrect and untrue.

"The report goes on to cite the 23 cases which are currently being examined by the Secretary of State with the full cooperation of SaTH which are already in the public domain.

"The reports go on to talk about '40 cases' identified in SaTH’s legacy review. This is inaccurate.

"We were initially asked to review 40 cases, which looked back over 19 years from 1998 to 2017. There were 16 families who came forward with questions about their care and another 24 who were put forward for SaTH to review by the independent midwife leading the Secretary of State enquiry.

"Of these 40, there were no signs of failure of care in 23 reviews and five families were not identifiable from the information available.

"We have written to the remaining 12 families to say there may be potential for further learning and to seek permission for their care to be reviewed by independent clinical experts to ensure any learning is identified.

"This information was all made available in June this year and can be found here.

"More recently, our maternity service has voluntarily used independent experts to reassure those families involved."

Simon Wright, chief executive at SaTH, said: “The death of any baby is a terrible ordeal for any family. We take our responsibilities in reviewing these cases very seriously. To suggest that there are more cases which have not been revealed when this is simply untrue is irresponsible and scaremongering.

“This will cause unnecessary anxiety amongst women going through one of the most important times of their life and I would like to assure them that our maternity services are a safe environment with dedicated caring staff.

“If anyone has any concerns we would be happy to discuss them.”