A council has been told it was not at fault over the death of two babies last year after paramedics were unable to enter a block of flats.
Jocelyn Bennett, 27, was 32 weeks pregnant with twins when she called paramedics from her home in Birmingham after suffering severe pain.
However emergency services were unable to open the communal door to the building and Ms Bennett was too ill to admit them via a door buzzer.
Ms Bennett later fell into a coma. The babies were delivered prematurely but died six days later.
Birmingham City Council said the door had been working on the day of the incident in October but confirmed it was considering giving emergency services keys to access blocks of flats.
An independent investigation has found ‘no evidence that the city council could reasonably have done anything more that would have changed the outcome of this tragic incident’. A separate review is to be undertaken by health and emergency services.
Council spokesperson Janet Priestley said: ‘The door entry system to Pleck House had no reported faults on the day of the incident and the city council procedures for access for the emergency services to blocks of flats were followed on the day that Ms Bennett called them.
‘This incident has led us to review procedures and we are exploring an improvement to access arrangements so that all emergency services will have keys which deactivate the communal door entry system and thereby giving immediate access.
‘This was a very unusual situation. West Midlands Ambulance Service has confirmed that they are called to blocks of flats numerous times per week.
‘They are usually able to gain access to communal areas of buildings without difficulty.’
Joe Bennett, Ms Bennett’s father, told the BBC: ‘It is ridiculous the emergency services have to wait for a member of the public [a resident] to let them in. They should have been given keys a long time ago.
‘For the sake of the £1 a key costs, my daughter would be much healthier than she now is and she might not have been in a coma for 19 days.
‘Medical staff said the babies might not have made it anyway, even if the ambulance had got there, because Joss had a big bleed. But what is so, so sad is she might have been able to see the girls alive.’
