The public inquiry into the crimes committed by former nurse Lucy Letby will not be halted, despite calls for it to be paused amid fresh efforts by Letby to appeal her convictions.
Lady Justice Thirlwall, chair of the inquiry, rejected applications by Letby’s legal team and a group of former hospital executives to pause it until the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) had finished its review of the case.
“It isn’t the actions of Letby that I am scrutinising”
Lady Justice Thirlwall
Letby, 35, is serving multiple whole-life prison sentences for the murder of seven babies, and attempted murder of seven others, while working as a neonatal nurse at Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016. She was sentenced in August 2023.
Since then, Letby has twice unsuccessfully attempted to overturn the convictions via applications to the Court of Appeal.
On 3 February 2025, her lawyers submitted an application to the CCRC, which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, to review the case after a group of international medical experts had claimed there was “no medical evidence” of murder or deliberate harm.
The Thirlwall Inquiry was set up shortly after Letby was convicted to probe the circumstances surrounding her crimes and how she was able to go undetected for so long.
After seven months of evidence sessions, the final hearing took place today.
Lady Thirlwall is due to write her final report, including recommendations for change, by the autumn. However, in the last few weeks, she has received a number of requests for this work to be paused.
One request came from Letby’s legal team, and another from a group of former leaders at Countess of Chester Hospital who were in post at the same time as Letby.
The leaders are Antony Chambers, Ian Harvey, Alison Kelly and Susan Hodkinson, who were chief executive, medical director, nursing director and HR director of the trust, respectively, and who are core participants of the inquiry.
The requests were made on two grounds: that the chair of an inquiry must avoid “unnecessary costs” and that publishing the report before the conclusion of the CCRC’s process would be unfair.
Lady Thirlwall, today, ruled that neither of these grounds – which must be met as per the rules of the Inquiries Act 2005 – applied.
She said that pausing the inquiry, and delaying the report by an indeterminate amount of time, would in fact increase costs.
On the question of fairness, Lady Thirlwall said she was “satisfied” the process of the inquiry had been fair, and that it did not become unfair due to the possibility that the convictions were “unsafe”.
“As I have said before, it isn’t the actions of Letby that I am scrutinising,” said Lady Thirlwall. “It is the actions of all those who were in the hospital…
“I am reviewing what they did at the time in light of what they knew at the time, and in light of what they should have known at the time.”
She added, after giving further detail on her reasoning: “Accordingly, subject to a review of my notes to ensure I’ve included everything – for all the reasons I have rehearsed through the course of this lengthy extemporary judgment, the application is refused.”
Lady Thirlwall said her work on writing the final report of the inquiry would begin “in earnest” tomorrow, and that she intended to publish it in November.
Health and social care secretary Wes Streeting has also received a request to suspend the inquiry, under separate powers he holds under the Inquiries Act 2005.
Read more about the Thirlwall Inquiry and Letby case
