Role in the case
As CEO, Chambers chaired the executive-team response to the 2015-2016 cluster of unexpected deaths on the neonatal unit. Thirlwall Inquiry evidence has documented the specific meetings at which the consultants’ concerns were raised, the internal-review process that followed, and the decision chain that led to the RCPCH service review rather than forensic investigation.
The consultants’ September 2016 joint letter asked the executive team for police referral. The request was declined. The RCPCH was commissioned instead. The RCPCH report itself recommended independent forensic investigation — a recommendation that was not acted on. Police were contacted in May 2017, eight months after the consultants’ letter.
Chambers left the Trust in 2018. He has given evidence to the Thirlwall Inquiry, which has scrutinised the executive-team decision chain in detail.
The July 2025 arrest
On 1 July 2025 Cheshire Police announced the arrest of three former senior executives of the Trust — Chambers among them — on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter. The other two arrested were Ian Harvey (former Medical Director) and Alison Kelly (former Director of Nursing). The arrests arise from investigative work post-dating the original Letby trial; the CPS has not yet made a charging decision on any of the three. The January 2026 CPS decision not to pursue 11 further charges relating to 9 additional babies was on different counts and does not affect the gross-negligence-manslaughter investigation.
The institutional-accountability dimension
The post-Letby institutional-accountability question — distinct from the conviction-safety question — asks how the Trust executive team’s decisions in 2015-2016 should be evaluated in light of what is now known about the unit’s staffing, clinical-governance conditions, and the response to consultant concerns. The Thirlwall Inquiry’s terms of reference are squarely on this question. Chambers is the senior executive whose decision chain is most extensively documented in the Thirlwall record.
This site does not take a position on the gross-negligence-manslaughter investigation or on the Thirlwall findings; both are live. The factual record available here is what the Thirlwall Inquiry has published and what is confirmed in public CPS and police statements.
Read alongside
- Ian Harvey — former Medical Director
- Alison Kelly — former Director of Nursing
- Sir Duncan Nichol — former Trust Board Chair
- Dr Stephen Brearey — consultant (joint-letter signatory)
- Dr Ravi Jayaram — consultant (joint-letter signatory)
- Evidence: the RCPCH 2017 report
- Analysis: RCPCH review as decoy
- Analysis: the seven-year delay problem
- Timeline: executives arrested July 2025
Source
Thirlwall Inquiry evidence bundles; Cheshire Police public statements (1 July 2025); Crown Prosecution Service public communications; contemporaneous broadsheet coverage (Guardian, Times, BBC News); Chester Standard live-blog records.