The biggest maternity review in the history of the NHS is about to be published.

After their daughter Harriet was stillborn at City Hospital in April 2016, Sarah and Jack Hawkins were one of the first families to raise the alarm about serious shortfalls at the trust.

An initial hospital assessment said there was “nothing obviously wrong”, and that their son had died of disease, but Sarah and Jack – who both worked for the faith – rejected that and pushed for an external assessment.

The external review, published in January 2019, found many failures Harriet’s death was “definitely preventable.”.

Jack Harriet, 57, who was a hospital consultant at the time of Harriet’s death, said: “How on earth do we allow 1,000 preventable child deaths every year in this country and in one place there are so many schools worth of children missing or injured beyond belief and dead mothers and injured mothers?

“How did we get here?”

Sarah, 43, a senior physiotherapist at the trust, said: “It’s huge, because we worked there too.

“We couldn’t go back to our jobs, our jobs, everything. Every aspect of life has changed.

“I know many families in Nottingham want some form of justice to clear their children’s names and to know that the damage was not their fault.”

The couple previously told how Harriet’s body was allowed to rot so badly at NUH that she had to be triple bagged for burial.

The couple’s legal action against the trust was settled out of court for £2.8m. It is believed to be the biggest payment A case of clinical negligence for a deceased child.