A newborn baby girl died because of disastrous failures during and shortly after her birth, an NHS trust has admitted.

Felicity Verallo-Robbins died less than seven hours after she was born at Watford General Hospital in May 2015, with a coroner ruling she would have probably survived if she had been delivered by C-section just 80 minutes earlier.

West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs hospitals in Watford, St Albans and Hemel Hempstead, accepted its failure of care during delivery and in Felicity’s first few hours tragically resulted in her death.

Chief nurse Tracey Carter said: “I would like to pass on my sincere apologies for the shortcomings in the treatment we provided. We are deeply sorry for the anguish this has caused.

“Following our internal investigation and an external review which we shared with the family, we have made significant changes to our practices.

“In the two years since this incident occurred we have overhauled our documentation processes and reviewed our policies within our maternity and neonatology teams.

"We have given the coroner assurance that cardiotocography training at the trust is robust and is being much more closely monitored than it was at the time of this baby’s death.

“The trust aims to provide the highest quality of care to its patients and I am very sorry that this was not the case in this instance.”

As part of the trust’s external review, other cases where similarities occurred were examined.

This identified shortcomings and additional learning and training which the trust said had now implemented into our daily practices.