How the Inquiry will work
The Inquiry will consider evidence from the individual patients or their families, and from staff past and present at the Trust including the Trust's management during the relevant period. The Inquiry will also take into account the evidence gathered for the Primary Care Trust's Independent Clinical Reviews, but will not act as a substitute for that process.
The Inquiry will focus on the facts of those individual cases that are considered by the Inquiry to raise concerns. It will not duplicate the investigations that have already been undertaken, or reconsider the basis for, and conclusions in, those reports. It will only be necessary for the Inquiry to go further than examining the individual cases and what the facts of those cases indicate about the way the hospital was run to the extent that they indicate further lessons to be learned, not already identified by the earlier reports.