Families are waiting for answers over the running of maternity services after hospital inspections raised safety fears.
Questions have been submitted to the board of Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust over the care of women and babies.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) rated maternity services “inadequate” in a report published in June.
NHS England then raised further concerns over staff shortages, poor communication and a lack of equipment after visits to Leeds General Infirmary and St James’s hospital.
At a trust board meeting, bereaved dad Dan Ramm wanted families’ questions answered in public, but was told they would be responded to “directly”.
He said: “These are accountability questions and you are withholding from the public. How do you plan to make your answers public?”
Trust chair Linda Pollard said Leeds Teaching Hospitals recognised there was a public interest but needed to properly consider the questions raised.
Mr Ramm and wife Fiona Winser-Ramm’s daughter Aliona died shortly after her birth in 2020. An inquest found a “number of gross failures of the most basic nature that directly contributed to Aliona’s death”.
Families affected by problems at the hospitals asked about leadership, communication and lessons being learned, the Local Democracy Reporting Service understands.
The trust was inspected by the CQC in December and January, then by NHS England in March as part of the Maternity Safety Support Programme (MSSP).
NHS England found some areas of good practice, but made more than 100 recommendations to improve.
Women felt they were not being listened to and some reported painful examinations being carried out without proper consent.
A shortage of CTG (cardiotocography) machines, used to monitor babies’ heart rates, had also not been addressed during the March MSSP visit.
The trust said it had established an independently-chaired improvement board following the inspections.
Chief nurse Rabina Tindale said listening events had since been organised to hear patients’ concerns and action had been taken on equipment shortages.
She told the meeting: “We have developed a comprehensive maternity and neonatal action plan which addresses all the CQC and MSSP recommendations.”
