Police arrested two men, aged 55 and 59, on 22 June 2026 in connection with how Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) was running its mortuary service. Nottinghamshire Police announced the arrests, saying they suspect the men of Misconduct in a Public Office.

This charge is serious. It applies when someone working in a public role breaks their duty or behaves in a way that fundamentally betrays public trust. The maximum penalty is life imprisonment. Because the threshold is so high, the decision to arrest both men signals that police believe the allegation is substantial.

The arrests are part of Operation Perth, a dedicated police investigation into operations at NUH's mortuary.

Nottingham University Hospitals has faced close scrutiny for several years. In 2022, the government launched an independent review into serious problems with the hospital's maternity services—the team that cares for pregnant women and newborns. That review was led by Donna Ockenden, the same investigator who examined major failures at another NHS maternity service in Shrewsbury and Telford—a report published by the government in March 2022. In March 2026, Ockenden was appointed again to investigate maternity services at Leeds Teaching Hospitals.

The mortuary arrests are a separate issue from the maternity problems. But they matter for the same reason—they show that Nottingham University Hospitals has faced serious questions about how it is run across different departments.

Police have not said what specific conduct they are investigating. In previous cases, charges like this have involved improper handling of bodies, performing post-mortems without permission, or removing tissue without consent. These actions would also violate the Human Tissue Act 2004, a law that governs how human bodies and organs are treated after death. At this stage, the two men have been arrested, but charges—if any—will be decided by the Crown Prosecution Service after police finish their investigation.

That Operation Perth has been given its own name and dedicated resources suggests the investigation is complex and substantial. Police investigations with named operations typically involve multiple officers, careful evidence collection, and coordination with NHS England, the Care Quality Commission (the health regulator), or the Human Tissue Authority (which oversees tissue handling), depending on what the alleged misconduct involved. The public naming of the operation also hints that more developments will likely follow.

For the hospital, the immediate steps will probably include internal staff investigations running alongside the police probe, reporting the situation to the Care Quality Commission (as hospitals are required to do), and possibly launching an independent review of how the mortuary is managed. Whether the wider NHS will intervene depends on the Care Quality Commission's current assessment of the trust.

Mortuary services sit at the crossroads of clinical oversight, rules about handling human remains, and the coroner system (judges who investigate certain deaths). This means several different agencies are responsible for checking what happens in mortuaries, which can sometimes leave gaps in who is actually watching. Whether this case reveals one of those gaps, or whether it simply reflects individual wrongdoing in an otherwise well-run system, is what the investigation will determine.