Recurring concern

Failure to acknowledge and act on employee safety concerns

First to latest report 9 Oct 2020 — 12 Feb 2025

Reports that mention this concern
2
Times this concern has been raised
2
Stated actions linked to this concern
1

What this concern includes

Includes failures in an employer or service's process for receiving, acknowledging, responding to, providing feedback on or acting upon health and safety concerns raised by employees or staff, including concerns raised repeatedly through formal reporting systems.

What is not included
  • Excludes concerns raised solely by patients, families, carers or members of the public unless employees or staff are the relevant complainants or reporters within the same employee safety-concern process.
  • Excludes generic failures of organisational culture, incident learning, complaint handling or communication where an employee or staff safety concern is not the bounded object.
  • Excludes failures to control the underlying workplace hazard when the employee concern-response process itself is not deficient.
  • Excludes individual employee performance, training, appraisal or disciplinary matters that do not concern handling an employee-raised safety concern.

Reports and published responses 2 reports

See individual reports that have raised this concern, and the actions taken in response

  1. Teesside and Hartlepool

    AI-generated summary

    Gary Lee JAMES · Prevention of Future Deaths report

    This summary was generated using AI from the published report. Please read the original report for the complete account.

    Report summary

    Gary Lee James died at James Cook University Hospital on 11 January 2019 from injuries sustained when metal frames fell on him while he was trying to move them at Ward Bros. The report identified concerns including inadequate risk assessment, training, equipment, supervision and first-aid provision, as well as failures to address employees’ safety concerns and unsafe working conditions.

    Read the report on judiciary.uk

    Source evidence

    How this individual concern was interpreted

    PFD Monitor created a concise, searchable interpretation from the report wording shown below.

    PFD Monitor interpretation

    Failure to acknowledge or act upon employee health and safety concerns

    Wider context from the report

    “7. There was a failure to acknowledge or act upon employee’s health & safety concerns. ”

    Source location

    Gary Lee JAMES · Prevention of Future Deaths report
    Page 2 · concerns

    Open source report

  2. Nottinghamshire

    AI-generated summary

    WYNTER SOPHIA ANDREWS · Prevention of Future Deaths report

    This summary was generated using AI from the published report. Please read the original report for the complete account.

    Report summary

    Wynter Sophia Andrews died after being delivered by caesarean section on 15 September 2019, following missed opportunities to monitor her wellbeing and concerns that she should have been delivered earlier. The report identified concerns about the lack of robust initial critical analysis of deaths and an unsafe culture within Midwifery Services, including failures to respond to staff safety concerns, facilitate professional challenge, and make decisions based on individualised patient risk.

    Read the report on judiciary.uk

    Source evidence

    How this individual concern was interpreted

    PFD Monitor created a concise, searchable interpretation from the report wording shown below.

    PFD Monitor interpretation

    Failure to listen and respond to staff safety concerns

    Wider context from the report

    “(a) Failure to listen to and respond to staff safety concerns I have made findings that the Maternity Services were operated in an unsafe manner on 14 – 15 September 2019. Staff told me this was not the first time, nor the last time, that they have been asked to care for multiple families simultaneously, meaning that those families cannot receive the time, focus and dedication they require. Staff further told me that they have repeatedly raised their concerns about patient safety, but their concerns have been met with silence. I saw evidence that staff were repeatedly raising their concerns through the Datix system, but they told me they would receive no feedback in reply nor would anything change. ”

    Source location

    WYNTER SOPHIA ANDREWS · Prevention of Future Deaths report
    Page 3 · concerns

    Open source report

    Source evidence

    How this respondent action was interpreted

    PFD Monitor created a concise, searchable interpretation from the published response wording shown below.

    PFD Monitor interpretation

    Review maternity Datix incidents weekly for themes and actions, and provide learning feedback to staff.

    Verbatim wording from the response

    “• A weekly review of incidents reported on Datix is being undertaken by the maternity governance team. This includes a review of themes and actions. Feedback of learning to staff commenced on 1st November 2020.”

    Source location

    2020-0202-Response-from-Nottingham-University-Hospitals-NHS-Trust_Redacted.pdf
    Page 4 · response
    Published 1 December 2020

    Open published response

Actions and positions describe what organisations say in published responses. Implementation is not independently verified.

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Data last updated 7 September 2026