Brighton GP and trans campaigner Sam Hall, with his WellBN foundation, was prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children as young as twelve. The doctor who voiced her concerns was the one who was investigated by the NHS. Hannah Barnes talks to Sarah Redvers in the Sunday Times:
When Dr Sarah Redvers received an email in July 2020 seeking advice on a vulnerable young patient, she could never have anticipated what the next six years would have in store.
Redvers believes she was forced out of her job after formally raising clinical and safeguarding concerns about Brighton-based doctor and trans campaigner Dr Sam Hall. Instead of senior health figures acting on the warnings, Redvers argues that she was victimised, accused of being transphobic and placed under investigation. Her sexuality was revealed to others without her consent and she very nearly lost her career.
Following the conclusion of the employment tribunal for constructive dismissal she has brought against her ex-employer, the NHS Sussex Integrated Care Board (ICB), and its former chief executive, Adam Doyle, in her only newspaper interview Redvers says: “I feel like I’ve been gaslit for years by my employer.”….
In June 2026, an independent patient safety investigation into WellBN, commissioned by NHS Sussex and NHS England, confirmed all that Redvers had feared, and more. Chaired by Judith Ellis, the report revealed that Hall and colleagues had been prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to young children against all NHS guidelines. The report examined the records of 78 children who had received the drugs between January 2023 and December 2025 after “wholly inadequate” assessments.
Fifty-one were under 16 when first prescribed hormones by WellBN. Four were just 12 years old. “Dr A” — identified in court as Sam Hall — issued more than half the prescriptions, sometimes without a face-to-face appointment. Care “fell far short of what could be considered safe or appropriate”
The true scale of WellBN’s prescribing to children is unknown but NHS prescription data, revealed under the Freedom of Information Act, gives an indication.
In the financial year 2024-25, WellBN issued hormone prescriptions to close to 1,100 individuals under the age of 25. At least 97 were under 18. That amounted to 15 per cent of all testosterone prescriptions issued for under-18s across the whole of London and the southeast. For 18 to 20-year-olds, the figure was a quarter.
Doyle accepted that the findings of the 2026 independent review “closely responded” to those raised by Redvers six years earlier, and, when put to him that a “scandal” had occurred, he accepted that practice taking place under his watch in Sussex was at odds with the national position.
For Redvers there is no sense of vindication, however. “It absolutely could have been prevented — all of it,” she said. Why did so many people fail to act on her concerns? Some in NHS Sussex believed Hall’s work was beneficial, Redvers said. But alongside that was fear: people were frightened about being called transphobic. “It was a perfect storm,” she said.
She accuses NHS England of “cowardice”, adding: “When I first went to them, they could see that these were real concerns about clinical and safeguarding issues. Very quickly, that changed into their concern about allegations of transphobia.”
Talking to Redvers, I cannot help thinking that I have heard this before. Clinicians at the Tavistock’s Gids shared the exact same observations with me from 2019 onwards: weak leadership combined with ideological capture, perceived prestige for the organisation, and fear had all led to children being harmed.
There are now calls for an independent inquiry. “There urgently needs to be an investigation of why every system that should have protected children, young people, and indeed young adults has failed,” Baroness Hilary Cass told The Sunday Times. “Clearly it goes beyond NHS Sussex to other regulatory bodies.”
Cass, whose landmark review into children’s gender services changed the way the NHS provided care, has urged the government to establish a body with the independent power to compel witnesses and disclosure “so that this sort of situation can’t arise again”.
The department of health and social care said: “The care provided by this GP practice was wholly unacceptable.” It is understood the government is now considering what further steps to take.
For Cass, the scandal that has unfolded in Brighton “dwarfs” that of the Tavistock’s Gids. She called on the GMC to immediately suspend Hall. “I really would want to ask why he still has a licence to practise.”
Yes, we’ve seen this movie before.
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