An NHS investigation into the activities of WellBN – a Brighton GP surgery which prescribed cross-sex hormones to children – has found it caused “actual potential harm” to its young patients and “fell substantially below” the professional standards of care required.
A Patient Safety Investigation Report, completed on 8 May, but published on the NHS website today, says record keeping was “poor and disorganised“, staff “failed to safely practice within the limits of their competence” and “puberty blockers and gender enhancing medications were prescribed without a comprehensive bio-psychosocial assessment (in 22 cases without even face-to-face appointments having taken place)“.
Potentially Sterilising Children Without Informed Consent
The report looked at the use of exogenous (applied externally) hormones and other medications to a cohort of 78 under eighteens between January 2023 and December last year. If found WellBN performed a “wholly inadequate assessment of all the children and young people prior to prescribing medication“. It also “took over prescribing gender medications from private prescribers accepting without assurance that the child had been adequately assessed and investigated“. Appallingly, “children and families were not appropriately informed of the impact of medication on fertility and options for gamete preservation, and only 4 children were referred to a specialist fertility and reproductive practitioner.”
There have been concerns about WellBN in Brighton for years. That’s why this report was commissioned. In July 2025, its chief gender-affirming cheerleader, Dr Sam Hall (pictured above), stood down in mysterious circumstances. A judicial review over the “care” WellBN was providing, made by a concerned parent, reached the High Court this year. At a recent hearing (which I was able to attend, thanks to the good people who financially support this website), WellBN refused to give the parent’s legal team the Patient Safety Investigation report, despite already being in possession of it.
Don’t Call The Cops
Safeguarding can be a low priority for adherents of gender ideology, which celebrates the blurring of boundaries between men and women, and adults and children. Predictably, the Patient Safety Investigation Report found “there was no evidence in the records that the Practice [WellBN] had made safeguarding referrals where there was evidence of safeguarding concerns.”
This included evidence of family breakdown and domestic abuse, occasions where young people were “taking banned and unlicensed/off label/specialist-only medications without appropriate assessment, care or monitoring” and “possible child sexual abuse“. In the latter case “mention of social service or police involvement was not further explored“. The report calls this “particularly concerning“.
There appear to be six doctors involved in this part of the WellBN operation, as well as two pharmacists and three Advanced Nurse Practitioners. None are named in the report. The mysterious “Dr A” seems to have been the most slapdash. The report says:
– In 36 cases prescribing was at the first face to face appointment. In all 36 cases the prescriber was Dr A.
– Dr A issued over 50% of the prescriptions, Dr C issued 20% and Dr B 10% of the prescriptions.
– In 22 cases Dr A never had a face-to-face appointment with the child/young person for whom he was writing prescriptions.
– Dr A and Dr C assumed the prescribing initiated by private prescribers without following the necessary guidelines.
The only clue as to Dr A’s identity we are given is that he is a man, as per the use of a male pronoun in the third sentence in the above list. Or is he? It’s hard to say in the wacky world of gender.
Increase the Dose!!!
As a whole, the report says “practice GPs appeared to ignore or dismiss concerns raised by children and families about symptoms which could have been attributed to medication.“
There’s more “58 of the patient group were under 16 years old when they received their first gender medication prescription… the records did not make any reference to the Practice’s GPs considering that neurodiversity could have an impact
on a child/young person’s gender related distress… a medical pathway was initiated following a gender dysphoria diagnosis in the 78 cases considered by [the investigating team] without evidence of careful consideration of any other options.”
Not evening counselling? No, apparently not. “The Practice appeared not to consider any possible interplay between gender
dysphoria/gender-related distress and mental health issues.” Whilst some patients were referred to the NHS’s Child and Adult Mental Health Services, “there appeared to be no documented record of any mental health assessment” of any patient.
Instead, WellBN (as some parents suspected) did indeed hand out the hormones like sweets, or in the report’s language “it also appeared that when a child’s mental health deteriorated, this was attributed to gender dysphoria/gender incongruence rather than consideration of an underlying mental health condition, and the Practice GPs continued gender medication or increased doses, even on one occasion against the direct advice of a patient’s named consultant psychiatrist.“
On the upside, “the Practice’s approach to prescribing puberty blockers and gender enhancing hormones does appear to have alleviated the distress of many of the 78 children and young people in the short-term. The Practice has stated that in a number of cases the parents described access to its service as “’life saving’ as their children were presenting with suicidality and dysphoria which represented a risk to their life as well as their social and psychological development”.” The report also noted WellBN staff’s “genuine desire and commitment to help distressed children/families who having sought help from the NHS had faced extensive delays in accessing NHS specialist gender dysphoria services.“
Utterly Damning
Nonetheless, WellBN doctors were breaking the rules, knew or should have known they were breaking the rules, and have caused, in that strange phrase “actual potential harm” to their patients.
So what happens now? The NHS says it’s told WellBN to stop offering gender care and prescribing hormones. It also says:
“A number of former and current clinicians at the WellBN Practice have been referred for the purpose of further professional investigation, both through their relevant independent professional regulator (the General Medical Council for medical professionals and the General Pharmaceutical Council for pharmacists) and/or through the NHS Professional Standards mechanism.”
There is no mention of any criminal investigation. It was part of the scope of the investigation, (“Consideration of whether any referral of individuals to the police is necessary“) yet the conclusion to that particular consideration has not been addressed in the report.
Dr Alice Hodkinson, a GP and co-founder of the campaign group Biology in Medicine says the report is “utterly damning. Trans activist Dr Sam Hall (a woman who says she’s a man) and her team were unqualified to prescribe these hormones. They failed to carry out basic monitoring, they didn’t bother even to secure consent in some patients for such risky off-label medication and their record keeping was shoddy. They took no advice from specialists in diagnosis, medication, mental health or fertility. The Levy review uncovered similarly poor practice in all adult gender clinics. Yet bizarrely, Levy’s recommended specialist GP Hubs to care for this vulnerable patient group. The GMC has failed, NHS England and Sussex ICB and the CQC all failed in their duties to protect patients from harm. As doctors, we routinely see the harms of cross sex hormones to our patients, no matter their age. Tight controls are needed over who can prescribe and in what circumstances, with robust evidence based guidelines to back it up.”
Adrian Hart is the co-founder of PSHE Brighton, a campaign group which supports parents who have concerns about the care of their gender distressed children. He said, “One child being harmed is too many. Since we were founded in 2023, we have met families, doctors, social workers and teachers, all of whom have raised concerns about the failure to adequately safeguard gender distressed children and provide them holistic care. Harm has been happening in plain sight; the wilful ignorance of public sector bodies needs to end. It’s imperative there is a proper investigation into how this has been allowed to happen.”
WellBN has been contacted for comment.
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