Blackpool Hospital Faces Corporate Manslaughter Probe After Sedation Scandal

As of September 2025, Lancashire Police are conducting a complex and extensive investigation into potential corporate failings at Blackpool Victoria Hospital's stroke unit. The probe, known as Operation Bermuda, was launched in October 2023 following the prosecution of five healthcare workers for drug offenses, with two of them jailed for sedating or conspiring to sedate patients to keep them quiet.

The investigation is focused on the period from 2014 to 2018 and is considering offenses such as corporate manslaughter, corporate ill-treatment, wilful neglect, and violations of the Health and Safety at Work Act. While the police have not commented on the specific patients involved, the 2023 trial of nurse Catherine Hudson and healthcare worker Charlotte Wilmot revealed that patients had been given the powerful sedative zopiclone, with more than 1,100 tablets dispensed in just two months despite only 207 being recorded as prescribed.

Alongside the sedation scandal, the investigation has also uncovered the violent death of 75-year-old patient Valerie Kneale in November 2018. An inquest concluded last week that Kneale was unlawfully killed, having bled to death days after a sexual assault in the hospital. A separate six-year murder investigation, Operation Jordan, was unable to find the killer.

The investigation into corporate failings is not linked to Kneale's death, but police are also looking at the deaths of eight other patients in 2018 in relation to allegations of mistreatment and neglect. The patients' inquests have not yet been held, and there is no suggestion that their deaths are linked to the 2023 convictions.