The boss of a scandal-hit NHS Trust has issued a fresh apology over a devastating breast cancer scandal that saw women subjected to needless surgery, missed cancers and shocking failures in care.
Steve Russell, chief executive of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust (CDDFT), faced up to the fallout from the scandal as he admitted the organisation had endured a "significantly tough year".
Speaking at the Trust's Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Durham on Tuesday (October 20), the NHS chief repeated his "profound apology" to women failed by its breast cancer service.
The apology comes after a string of damning investigations exposed years of serious patient safety failings, missed warning signs and troubling questions over the Trust's leadership.
The scandal has rocked confidence in the NHS organisation, which runs hospitals across County Durham and Darlington, leaving women and their families facing agonising questions over whether they received the care they desperately needed.
University Hospital of North Durham in Durham City. The Northern Echo interview CEO of the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, Steve Russell (Image: Chris Booth)
Meanwhile, others have called for government intervention and a public inquiry into the scandal.
Speaking at the AGM, Mr Russell said: "I'm going to acknowledge the significant challenges we've had as an organisation.
"I want to repeat a profound apology to all of the women who have been let down by the breast cancer service.
"This year has laid bare all of the challenges that we had and all of the challenges that lie ahead.
"We're moving forward by trying to have these open and honest discussions about our shortcomings and also how we can solve them and make the organisation one that patients want to access."
His latest apology comes almost a year after an explosive independent investigation laid bare the scale of the failings within the Trust's breast surgery service.
University Hospital of North Durham in Durham City (Image: Chris Booth)
The 232-page review, led by Mary Aubrey and published in November 2025, identified "serious and longstanding weaknesses in leadership, governance and patient care" stretching back more than a decade, between 2012 and 2025.
The investigation found patients had suffered "avoidable physical and psychological harm", including delayed diagnoses, unnecessary mastectomies and other procedures which were not clinically justified.
It also identified missed opportunities to provide appropriate treatment, outdated clinical practices and failures to follow national guidance.
It found that senior leaders had "failed to properly challenge practices and act on warning signs", allowing serious problems to continue.
The review also raised concerns about the relationship between clinical practice and financial gain, although it did not establish that every instance of unnecessary treatment was financially motivated.
University Hospital of North Durham in Durham City. CEO of the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, Steve Russell (Image: Chris Booth)
In its formal response to the findings, the Trust admitted that it had been too slow to act and had failed to put patient safety at the heart of its decision-making.
Mr Russell and interim chair Alison Marshall acknowledged that the organisation had lost sight of its priorities, admitting: "We had lost our North Star."
They accepted responsibility for the failures and apologised to patients and staff who had been harmed or whose concerns had not been heard.
The process is designed to identify patients who may have suffered harm, establish whether their treatment was appropriate and determine whether further clinical support or explanations are needed.
An initial review of patients treated in 2024 was underway in 2025, with the Trust confirming that 123 individual cases had been examined with external expert support by July of that year.
Further investigations have since been undertaken into earlier years of care, with the Trust agreeing to a 'year by year' approach to a lookback, between 2025 and 2015 and stopping after every year.
In September 2026, the Trust acknowledged that its continuing look-back process had identified harm in some patients whose cases would not necessarily have been picked up by the original investigation.
Darlington Memorial Hospital (Image: NORTHERN ECHO)
The findings have intensified concerns about how many patients may have been affected and whether the full scale of the scandal has yet emerged.
The breast cancer controversy has also exposed much wider problems at the Trust.
The watchdog uncovered "serious weaknesses in governance, risk management and the handling of patient safety incidents and complaints," describing it as "turning a blind eye".
Inspectors identified a "closed culture" which had "discouraged openness and transparency", with some staff describing an environment in which they feared speaking up.
The CQC said there was evidence of resistance to change, while some employees felt "disconnected from senior leaders" and believed management priorities were "not always aligned with frontline patient care."
The regulator also found that warnings had not always been acted upon and opportunities to learn lessons from incidents had been missed.
In particularly damning findings, the watchdog concluded that "ineffective senior leadership previously in place at the Trust" had contributed to "failures identified within surgical services".
The findings raised serious questions about how such significant problems had been allowed to develop and persist within one of the region's biggest NHS organisations.
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They also fuelled criticism of the Trust's previous leadership and its failure to act on concerns raised over a number of years.
For the women affected and their families, the consequences have been traumatic and devastating.
Some have been left questioning whether major operations were necessary, whether their cancer could have been diagnosed sooner and whether they were given the full range of treatment options available.
The scandal has also prompted wider questions about accountability, transparency and whether patients and staff who raised concerns were properly heard.
In November 2025, following the publication of the independent review, Mr Russell acknowledged the scale of the organisation's failures.
He said at the time: "We failed to provide the standard of care our patients deserved, breached their trust, and for that, I offer my unreserved apology."
The Trust has since outlined a series of changes, including the appointment of new specialist breast surgeons, stronger clinical leadership, improvements to diagnostic services and greater independent oversight of treatment decisions.
It has also reported reductions in mastectomy and repeat operation rates, alongside improvements in access to immediate breast reconstruction.