Staff compensation is costing Barking and Dagenham Council £20,000 a month according to recently released figures.  The figures were released following a Freedom of Information request, which detailed that the council paid out to 90 separate incidents between January 2009 and September 2013, averaging out at just less than £20,000 a month.  The total paid out to claimants during this time was £1,123,347.

A woman who was forced to wait for a year to have an operation for her severely painful womb condition has been sent an apology from the NHS. Dawn O’Toole was diagnosed with endometriosis in 2014 - a painful condition whereby tissue that behaves like that in the lining of the womb, is found outside the womb.  She urgently required a hysterectomy following the diagnosis, but never received an operation date.

Campaigners argue that a health trust’s new plan to outsource mental health care by putting patients on Skype to workers in “lower wage countries” is unacceptable. The idea was proposed in a recent report put forward by the mental health trust for Norfolk and Suffolk.  Unison, which represents mental health staff, said that the idea failed to show any understanding of how mental health care actually works. A trust spokesman said that the proposal was looked at by the government but immediately dismissed.

A woman has finally had her brain tumour removed after her operation was cancelled and rescheduled three times. 24-year-old Emily Bennet, from Fernhill Heath near Worcester, was originally meant to have her tumour removed at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham at the beginning of December.  However, it was cancelled because a more severe case required her operation slot at the hospital.

The family of a man who died of an undiagnosed ruptured spleen has described the fact that nobody has been held accountable for their son’s death as “shameful”. John Moore-Robinson, aged 20, died after being sent home from Stafford Hospital with a ruptured spleen that doctors had failed to recognise. His parents, Frank and Janet Robinson, feel that someone should be held accountable.

A psychiatric hospital in York is to be closed after inspectors described it as “unsuitable and unsafe for patients”.  The Archbishop of York originally built the hospital in 1777 as the ‘County Lunatic Asylum’, which was later changed to the Bootham Park Hospital.  The hospital houses two acute admission wards, one for men and one for women, and also has an elderly assessment unit for people aged over 65. A recent inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), however, found the hospital to be no longer safe for patients.

A man has been charged after punching three strangers in the face as they left a bar in Plymouth. 25-year-old Dominic Shorten assaulted the individuals in an unprovoked attack, knocking one of them unconscious. Mr Shorten admitted the three counts of assault against Mr Alexander, Ross Pettitt and James Spingnall on 17 September at Plymouth Magistrates’ Court.

A welder who was hit by a falling metal frame has sued a Downham firm for up to £200,000 in compensation. 40-year-old Scott Fewster had been working as a welder at a skateboard ramp manufacturers, called Highline Extreme, when a metal frame fell on him. He said that the metal frame pushed him back onto a concrete floor, which left him with severely debilitating injuries.

Incidents involving duck boat tours in Liverpool and London have highlighted serious failings.  A recent report found that the incidents were caused by both poor maintenance and a general failure to meet standards. The Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) said that the company behind the amphibious duck vehicles is “extremely fortunate” that no one was hurt in either of the incidents.

A review has been opened into the care received by a teenager at Redhill’s East Surrey Hospital after she died in August. 19-year-old Georgina Weaver was admitted to the hospital with complaints of severe headaches and blurred vision. Georgina’s parents are still waiting to hear the actual cause of their daughter’s death following delays in the post-mortem examination.

A woman that was hit by a police car that was responding to a 999 call has been left with “possibly life-threatening injuries”.  The 33-year-old woman, who remains unnamed, was hit at a junction just outside the centre of Bristol city centre last night (Saturday 29 November).  Police were responding urgent reports concerning a man making threats with a knife when the accident happened.

An East Sussex hospital has apologised to the family of a breast cancer patient who died following an operation in 2012. 35-year-old Nicole Haynes was undergoing a routine procedure at the Eastbourne District General Hospital to remove a tumour from her adrenal gland when the surgeon accidentally “clipped the wrong vessels”. It was heard that surgeon Steve Garnett had “misidentified” the arteries which caused the death of Mrs Haynes.

New figures have revealed that police dogs bite an average of five people every week in London alone. Compensation paid out to victims has more than doubled in the last three years, standing at £250,000.  The lawyers representing the victims described the number of attacks as “troubling” and said that the force should be doing more to prevent these accidents from happening.

Suffolk County Council has paid out £70,000 to claimants for pothole damage over the last two years. The figures were released under a Freedom of Information request, which uncovered the sum to be made up of personal injury compensation, vehicle damage, legal fees and other costs.

With screenings playing an important role in the diagnosis and treatment of numerous illnesses, such as cancer, the NHS has recently been criticised for not using the equipment adequately.  The Science and Technology Committee has accused the NHS of “poor communication” on the issue of screenings, with people all over the UK being subject to both misdiagnosis and “overdiagnosis”.

A former nurse has been awarded £225,000 in compensation after she was forced to leave her job following a serious fall on holiday. 58-year-old Kathleen Powell had been a nurse for the army when she went on holiday to Tenerife in 2006.  The accident happened during a salsa dancing class when she slipped on a wet floor, around which were no warning signs. Ms Powell suffered three broken bones in her leg and two broken toes.  She is still in pain eight years after the accident happened.

It has been decided that no criminal charges will be made following the deaths of two women in a nightclub crush in 2011. 22-year-old Nabila Nanfuka and 19-year-old Laurene-Danielle Jackson were both out at Lava & Ignite in Northampton on the 18^th of October 2011.  Around 1,500 had been in the nightclub when the crush happened during a Wickedest Wickedest event.  Most of the clubbers had been university students who had travelled to the event on coaches.

After a family recently received compensation for the brain damage of their son following a hospital error, figures have revealed that the health trust has paid out over £37.8 million to patients in the last ten years. Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust agreed to compensate the family of Cody Lyster-Hughes £6.5m earlier this week – one of the biggest payouts the health trust has ever made.

A man from Bedworth has been banned from owning dogs after he pleaded guilty to owning dangerous dogs that caused injury.  58-year-old Jasvinder Chana admitted to owning two dogs that caused injury on two separate occasions, on Monday 11^th August and Wednesday 13^th August.  The victims, a fourteen-year-old boy and a fourteen-year-old girl, were both left with severe injuries following the attacks.

A wave of public anger has overcome the Derby community after a destruction order was placed on a dog forced to bite a shop assistant by its owner.  Tia, a “pitbull or Staffordshire” type dog, was forced by her owner, Jessiah Johnson, to attack a shop assistant in November last year. Magistrates ordered the destruction of the dog following the incident, which has resulted in a public outcry with people arguing that the dog should not be held responsible.