THE trust managing Basildon and Southend hospitals paid out £103million in the last ten years due to failings it its maternity department, it has been revealed.

The Mid and South Essex Trust also had the highest number of successful clinical negligence claims of any NHS provider.

The shocking figures were obtained by Channel 4 news, which revealed a total pay-out of £103,097,198 between 2010/11 and 2020/21.

A spokesperson for the trust told the BBC that the maternity payments related to cases which could have happened over a 20-year period.

The three hospitals under the Mid and South Essex Trust are Basildon Hospital, Southend Hospital, and Broomfield Hospital.

The clinical negligence claims during this period related to 36 mother or baby deaths, 31 babies with brain damage, 24 with cerebral palsy and 27 stillbirths.

One incident that sparked a claim was the death of mum Gabriela Pintilie, who bled to death in childbirth. The 36-year-old, from Grays, lost six litres of blood after giving birth via caesarean section in February 2019.

NHS resolution handle negligence cases on behalf of the trusts and their data revealed that there were 179 successful claims against it in 2020/21 in all departments.

A spokesperson for the trust said: “Since our merger, we are one of the largest trusts in England and the figure is for all clinical claims across all of our sites settled in 2020-1.

“The incidents giving rise to these claims could have happened up to two decades before.

“Over the last few years, we have made improvements to our maternity services, including recruiting 40 newly qualified midwives, a consultant midwife, practice development midwives and maternity care assistants and securing almost £2 million in funding for the further recruitment and development of staff.

“We are pleased that the CQC’s latest inspection recognised the work that has taken place and improved our rating.”

The trust was created in April 2020 and its combined units make it the third biggest in the country.

NHS resolution provided a statement in response to the figures revealed.

A spokesman said: “We have attempted to give some indication of context in terms of the size of member, inevitably different institutions face different levels of rick because of the variations in the nature and complexity of the procedures they perform.”