Corridor patient care due to insufficient space
Department of Health and Social Care received 3 coroners' reports about this hazard between 27 Jul 2020 and 5 Aug 2025.
They came from 2 different coroners in 2 coroner areas. A similar concern was raised again 2 times after the first warning.
A published response was found for 2 of the 2 earlier reports, stating 5 specific actions.
The story, report by report
Spacing grows with the time between reports.
“As a result of the lack of appropriate space Mr [name redacted] an elderly and vulnerable patient was treated in the corridor for periods during his stay in the ED.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Department of Health and Social Care responded, stating 2 specific actions.Response (PDF) ↗Response (PDF) ↗
“The new approach will incorporate two elements: - Implementation of the new national NHS 111 First Initiative, which will ask patients to call 111 prior to attending an Emergency Department - A new pre-Emergency Department triage and streaming system Both of these will help ensure patients are streamed or referred to the most appropriate service for their needs. This will include a wide range of community and acute-based services and will ensure only patients who need an Emergency Department go”
Stated timescale: April 2022
“We must do all we can to learn from what happened to Mr [name redacted] and improve the safety and quality of NHS care and I expect the Stockport NHS Foundation Trust and its local system partners to reflect carefully on the findings of your investigation.”
- 4 years 3 months laterIdentical hazardConfidence 0.90 · higha different coroner
“when the Emergency Department of the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton reached capacity patients would be moved to and treated in the corridor as there was no clinical area available to do so”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Repeated from the earlier report:treatedcorridor
Department of Health and Social Care responded, stating 1 specific action.Response (PDF) ↗
“The report raises concerns over emergency department capacity, poor patient flow and the use of corridor care at Royal Sussex County Hospital (RSCH) and nationally. I understand that your report and matters of concerns have also been sent to NHS England, and they are best placed to respond with the specific actions being taken locally to improve urgent and emergency care performance at RSCH.”
Web search (Tavily): No evidence found either way
General debate on corridor care in the NHS ↗ - 10 months later
Raised again · 2nd time
Maureen Batchelor↗
5 Aug 2025 · Joanne Andrews · West Sussex, Brighton and Hove
Identical hazardConfidence 0.90 · higha different coroner“when the Emergency Department of the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton reached capacity patients would be moved to and treated in the corridor as there was no clinical area available to do so.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Repeated from the earlier report:treatedcorridor
Department of Health and Social Care responded, stating 2 specific actions.Response (PDF) ↗Response (PDF) ↗Response (PDF) ↗
“We now have a Direct to specialties so certain categories of patient are accepted by the relevant specialty on presentation to the ED. Our Interim General Manager for Medicine and Urgent Care (Brighton and Haywards Heath) is the Responsive workstream lead for this, and data is collected daily for all specialty referrals from ED, to monitor the response times from the specialties. Specialties in-reach to ED/AMU/SDEC and we operate a 3/2/1 bleep system to ensure this is fast and effective. There”
“We now have a Direct to specialties so certain categories of patient are accepted by the relevant specialty on presentation to the ED. Our Interim General Manager for Medicine and Urgent Care (Brighton and Haywards Heath) is the Responsive workstream lead for this, and data is collected daily for all specialty referrals from ED, to monitor the response times from the specialties. Specialties in-reach to ED/AMU/SDEC and we operate a 3/2/1 bleep system to ensure this is fast and effective. There”
- All reports to Department of Health and Social Care
Each row is one judged link between an earlier and a later report. Open a row to read both quotes, found word for word in the originals.
2020 → 2024Tamara Davis4 years 3 months after Samuel Garner · different coronerIdentical hazardConfidence 0.90 · high
Identical hazardConfidence 0.90 · highBoth reports describe patients being treated in emergency department corridors because there is insufficient clinical space when the department reaches capacity. The core concern is the use of non‑designated corridor areas for patient care due to lack of beds or space.
Samuel Garner · 27 Jul 2020
“As a result of the lack of appropriate space Mr [name redacted] an elderly and vulnerable patient was treated in the corridor for periods during his stay in the ED.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Tamara Davis · 15 Oct 2024
“when the Emergency Department of the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton reached capacity patients would be moved to and treated in the corridor as there was no clinical area available to do so”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ 2020 → 2025Maureen Batchelor5 years after Samuel Garner · different coronerIdentical hazardConfidence 0.90 · high
Identical hazardConfidence 0.90 · highBoth reports describe patients being treated in emergency department corridors due to insufficient clinical space when the department is at capacity. The core concern is the lack of appropriate space leading to corridor care.
Samuel Garner · 27 Jul 2020
“As a result of the lack of appropriate space Mr [name redacted] an elderly and vulnerable patient was treated in the corridor for periods during his stay in the ED.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Maureen Batchelor · 5 Aug 2025
“when the Emergency Department of the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton reached capacity patients would be moved to and treated in the corridor as there was no clinical area available to do so.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Stated action in the response to the earlier report
“The new approach will incorporate two elements: - Implementation of the new national NHS 111 First Initiative, which will ask patients to call 111 prior to attending an Emergency Department - A new pre-Emergency Department triage and streaming system Both of these will help ensure patients are streamed or referred to the most appropriate service for their needs. This will include a wide range of community and acute-based services and will ensure only patients who need an Emergency Department go”
Stated action · timescale: April 2022
“The new approach will incorporate two elements: - Implementation of the new national NHS 111 First Initiative, which will ask patients to call 111 prior to attending an Emergency Department - A new pre-Emergency Department triage and streaming system Both of these will help ensure patients are streamed or referred to the most appropriate service for their needs. This will include a wide range of community and acute-based services and will ensure only patients who need an Emergency Department go”
Stated action
“We must do all we can to learn from what happened to Mr [name redacted] and improve the safety and quality of NHS care and I expect the Stockport NHS Foundation Trust and its local system partners to reflect carefully on the findings of your investigation.”
Stated action
“The report raises concerns over emergency department capacity, poor patient flow and the use of corridor care at Royal Sussex County Hospital (RSCH) and nationally. I understand that your report and matters of concerns have also been sent to NHS England, and they are best placed to respond with the specific actions being taken locally to improve urgent and emergency care performance at RSCH.”
What happened next: No evidence found either way
The promised report raises concerns about emergency department capacity, patient flow and corridor care at Royal Sussex County Hospital and nationally, and notes that NHS England is best placed to respond with specific actions. No timeframe for these actions is provided.
“Several reports have raised concerns about the s”
No evidence found does not mean the action did not happen.
No specific action could be extracted with a verified quote.
Stated action
“We now have a Direct to specialties so certain categories of patient are accepted by the relevant specialty on presentation to the ED. Our Interim General Manager for Medicine and Urgent Care (Brighton and Haywards Heath) is the Responsive workstream lead for this, and data is collected daily for all specialty referrals from ED, to monitor the response times from the specialties. Specialties in-reach to ED/AMU/SDEC and we operate a 3/2/1 bleep system to ensure this is fast and effective. There”
Stated action
“We now have a Direct to specialties so certain categories of patient are accepted by the relevant specialty on presentation to the ED. Our Interim General Manager for Medicine and Urgent Care (Brighton and Haywards Heath) is the Responsive workstream lead for this, and data is collected daily for all specialty referrals from ED, to monitor the response times from the specialties. Specialties in-reach to ED/AMU/SDEC and we operate a 3/2/1 bleep system to ensure this is fast and effective. There”
- Each report's concerns were extracted by Nemotron 3 Nano on Nebius Token Factory, each with a quote copied from the report.
- Concerns from reports to Department of Health and Social Care at least six months apart were compared by meaning (Qwen3 embeddings) and wording (TF-IDF).
- The closest pairs were judged by Nemotron 3 Super with reasoning on. Only identical or closely related, with confidence of at least 0.70, are shown.
- Every quote was checked by code as an exact substring of the original text. Names of staff and family are redacted, and the deceased are named by report title only.
| Link | Meaning | Wording | Judge | Coroner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 → 2024 | 0.78 | 0.29 | Identical · 0.90 | different |
| 2020 → 2025 | 0.75 | 0.19 | Identical · 0.90 | different |
Judge model: nvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b. How Nemotron did the work · Full methodology.
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This shows that a similar concern was raised again after an earlier report. It does not say why, and it is not a finding about any organisation or person. To report an error, see the corrections route.