Two men, aged 55 and 59, were arrested on 22 June 2026 on suspicion of Misconduct in a Public Office in connection with operating practices within the mortuary service at Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH), Nottinghamshire Police announced.

The arrests, confirmed under Operation Perth — Nottinghamshire Police's dedicated investigation into NUH — centre on the conduct of individuals employed within or connected to the trust's mortuary function. Misconduct in a Public Office is a common law offence carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment; it applies where a public officeholder wilfully neglects their duty or commits an act of misconduct to a degree that amounts to an abuse of the public's trust. The threshold for arrest and charge is correspondingly high, which means the decision to move against two individuals at this stage is not routine.

NUH has been under sustained regulatory and public scrutiny for several years. The trust is perhaps best known nationally for the independent maternity review launched in September 2022 under Donna Ockenden, the same reviewer who produced the landmark final report into maternity failures at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust — published by the government in March 2022 — and who was subsequently appointed by Health Secretary Wes Streeting in March 2026 to chair a comparable review into Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust's maternity services. Ockenden has, in effect, become the government's primary instrument for systemic maternity investigation.

The mortuary arrests are a separate thread entirely from the maternity review, but they land within the same institutional frame: a trust that has faced prolonged questions about governance and patient safety across multiple service lines. For professionals tracking NHS accountability, the significance is that scrutiny of NUH is now multi-directional — encompassing both clinical care and, now, what happens to patients after death.

Misconduct in a Public Office charges in NHS mortuary contexts are uncommon but not without precedent. The offence has previously been used in cases involving inappropriate handling of human remains, unauthorised post-mortem procedures, or the removal of tissue without consent — conduct that would simultaneously breach the Human Tissue Act 2004. Whether any such considerations apply here has not been stated by police. At this stage, the two men have been arrested; charges, if any, remain a matter for the Crown Prosecution Service following investigation.

Operation Perth's existence as a named, dedicated operation suggests the inquiry has sufficient scope and complexity to warrant sustained resourcing. Named operations of this kind within UK policing typically involve multiple investigators, a structured evidence-gathering phase, and coordination with NHS England, the Care Quality Commission, or the Human Tissue Authority depending on the nature of the alleged conduct. The public naming of the operation also signals an expectation of further updates — arrests of this kind rarely stand alone.

For NUH, the immediate institutional consequences are likely to include internal HR processes running parallel to the police investigation, potential notification obligations to the CQC under the duty of candour framework, and pressure on the trust's board to commission or accelerate an independent review of mortuary governance. Whether NHS England exercises any oversight intervention will depend on the CQC's current regulatory position on the trust.

The broader NHS context matters here. Mortuary services sit at the intersection of clinical governance, human tissue regulation, and coroner jurisdiction — a zone where oversight has historically been fragmented. The Human Tissue Authority licenses mortuary facilities, the CQC inspects trusts, and coroners retain judicial interest in deaths referred to them. That layered structure can produce accountability gaps, particularly in services that operate largely outside public view. Whether this case exposes one of those gaps, or reflects individual misconduct within an otherwise sound system, is precisely what Operation Perth is designed to determine.