Background
Eunice Asiedu-Baning, a registered midwife, faced disciplinary charges arising from an agency night shift at Milton Keynes University Hospital on 3–4 November 2017. The Nursing and Midwifery Council’s Fitness to Practise Committee found that she had made inaccurate records concerning blood-glucose readings and observations for newborn babies and had acted dishonestly. It rejected some other allegations, including one concerning an unidentified “brown tablet.”
After a hearing that ran for 76 days over two years and nine months, the committee found misconduct and impairment on public-protection and public-interest grounds. On 17 October 2025, it ordered Asiedu-Baning’s name struck from the register and imposed an 18-month interim suspension pending any appeal. She appealed under Articles 29(9) and 38(1) of the Nursing and Midwifery Order 2001, challenging the factual findings, sanction, extensive delay, management of cross-examination, refusal to adjourn for ill health or pending judicial review, alleged racial bias, and other asserted procedural defects.
The Court’s Holding
Mr Justice Kolinsky dismissed the appeal. Although the delay of more than seven and a half years was excessive and the committee could have managed the hearing more effectively, much of the delay had reasonable explanations, including the Rule 7A review, the COVID-19 pandemic, the recusal of an earlier panel chair, and difficulties relisting the part-heard case. The critical question was whether a fair hearing remained possible, and the committee was entitled to conclude that it did, given the available witness testimony and contemporaneous records.
The court held that the committee acted fairly in proceeding without Asiedu-Baning after she declined to provide it with supporting medical evidence, and it did not have to halt proceedings merely because an unsuccessful judicial-review challenge was pending. Requiring advance written questions after concerns about delay, repetition, and the tone of cross-examination was reasonable case management and did not prevent her case from being presented.
The committee’s findings were supported by the evidence, and its treatment of the rejected, unsupported accusations against patients and another midwife as an aggravating feature was consistent with authority because it carefully explained why those accusations caused harm and demonstrated attitudinal concerns. Having considered lesser sanctions, the committee was entitled to find striking off proportionate. Its decision was neither wrong nor unjust because of a serious procedural or other irregularity.
Key Takeaways
- Even excessive regulatory delay will not require proceedings to be stayed unless the delay prevents a fair hearing or creates sufficiently serious prejudice.
- A disciplinary panel may proceed in a registrant’s absence where an adjournment request based on ill health is unsupported by medical evidence made available to the panel.
- A panel may control repetitive or oppressive cross-examination, including by requiring questions in advance, while still preserving a fair opportunity to present the defence.
- Unsupported allegations made as part of a defence may affect sanction when the panel carefully explains their harmful impact and relevance to insight or attitudinal concerns.
Why It Matters
The judgment illustrates the High Court’s approach to appeals from professional disciplinary panels: it may assess whether factual findings are supported, but gives substantial weight to a specialist panel’s evaluation of professional misconduct, impairment, and sanction. A lengthy and imperfect process does not by itself invalidate the result.
For regulators and practitioners, the decision also emphasizes the need to distinguish robust advocacy from oppressive questioning, to support health-based adjournment applications with proper evidence, and to analyze carefully before treating the manner in which a registrant defended charges as aggravating misconduct.