A mother is suing Queen’s Hospital maternity unit claiming delays in the delivery of her son caused a shortage of oxygen to his brain.

Sarah Hutchins’ son Blake was born in 2009, but suffers from developmental delay. She says a blunder happened because maternity staff at did not act quickly enough. The results of an inquiry into her case carried out three years ago were only revealed to her last month.

She is suing Barking, Havering, and Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, for the poor care she allegedly received and the damage caused to Blake.

Mrs Hutchins became concerned when her baby stopped moving. She went to the hospital, but says staff did not act quickly enough. A midwife failed to recognise the baby was in distress and claimed the baby was asleep, she says.

Mrs Hutchins, originally from Dagenham, and now living in Ongar, said: “I carried on arguing, but I was not listened to. It is stated in the report that Queen’s have finally shown me that the midwife and doctors failed to recognise a pathological CTG reading, more than three hours before they delivered Blake. This was down to staff training issues.”

The findings were only discovered by Mrs Hutchins last month when they were disclosed by a doctor at another hospital.

Sarah Harman, Mrs Hutchins’ solicitor, said: “We are not only concerned with the poor care Sarah had in 2009 at Queens’ when she was made to wait nearly four hours after arriving at hospital before she had a caesarean, but the way Queens’ failed to tell her that an internal enquiry at the time had identified serious failings.”

A trust spokesman said: “Sarah Hutchins is meeting with senior clinicians to review all the information about the birth of her baby on 11th April, and they will be able to answer any questions she may have. We are sorry for the delay in providing this information to her.

“It would be inappropriate to publicly discuss the findings of the report into the birth of her baby until that meeting has taken place.”