Health chiefs have faced further questions about the baby deaths scandal at a Kent hospitals trust which is the subject of two independent inquiries.

A cross-party committee of county councillors quizzed bosses of the East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust over what had gone wrong and what was being done to address the failings.

The trust is the subject of two as yet unpublished investigations the Department of Health ordered after revelations about the deaths of as many as 15 babies, including Harry Richford and Archie Batten.

Liz Shutler, director of strategic development - one of four representatives to appear before the panel - said the trust had recognised as early as 2015 that the quality of maternity care needed to improve and “was not what it should have been.”

Despite implementing measures, the quality of care did not improve as quickly as the trust needed it to or on the scale that was required.

She offered another apology, saying that “even one death that could have been prevented was one death too many.”

The Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee was told that an independent board had been set up to review how the trust had responded to the earlier - also critical - report in 2015 identifying shortcomings.

Mrs Shutler said the trust had recently recruited six specialist midwifery posts and was committed to taking seriously the outcomes and recommendations.

But there were questions raised at the meeting about how the trust would be able to demonstrate that services had improved in the way it wanted.

Cllr Nick Chard said: “How can people be assured the board is correctly monitoring what is happening and that it is implementing best practice? What I want to know is what is the trust doing now that it wasn’t back in 2016? I have no doubt that you want them to be the best services; we all do; but they haven’t been.”

Labour county councillor Karen Constantine raised the issue of comments made by trust chief executive Susan Acott who had said that a lower number of deaths were the subject of investigations.

“I was very disappointed when she said six or seven babies died... It was reprehensible and really should have been avoided. It was an outrageous statement,” she said.

In response to a question about whether any action had been taken against the chief executive, Liz Shutler said she was “committed to leading the trust” and there had been confusion over the numbers.

It would be wrong to comment further until the government’s own report and the trust's internal investigation had clarified the figures of how many families have been affected, she added.

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