NINE babies in Dorset had to be recalled for new hearing tests after concerns were raised by Public Health England about initial checks.

An alert was issued in July to Dorset HealthCare Trust by the national health agency after they identified “possible discrepancies” in its testing processes.

The issue has been made public in a report provided to the trust’s board which reveals than an audit carried out into the issue identified nine “breaches” in its newborn hearing screening programme.

The report says: “A route cause analysis had identified some failures and a number of immediate actions were taken regarding training.

It adds that members of the trust's Quality Governance Committee had raised concerns about the large number of staff conducting the tests and the number of machines involved and "asked for additional work to be conducted to ensure that skill levels could be safely maintained".