A GP practice in Brighton and Hove has been ordered to stop prescribing transgender hormone treatment to children after an NHS investigation concluded that its care had fallen far short of what is considered safe and appropriate. The review by NHS Sussex examined how the WellBN practice had been handling the prescribing, and found that the medication had been given to young patients without the proper checks in place to safeguard them.
According to the investigation, the practice had prescribed the treatment to seventy-eight children over a period of years. Investigators also found that twenty of those children, between February 2023 and December 2025, had been given medication without ever having had a face-to-face appointment, a detail that sat at the centre of the concerns about how closely the prescribing had been assessed and monitored.
The findings concluded that those responsible for the prescribing were not experts in this area of medicine, and that the potential effects of the treatment had not been properly explained to the children involved or to their families. The drugs had at times been presented as safe, carrying no side effects or only limited ones, an assurance that the investigation found did not hold up to scrutiny once the care was examined in detail.
Concerns about the clinic were not new when the investigation finally began. People in the local area had first raised alarms around 2020, warning that children were being prescribed the drugs, and those warnings were said to have been repeated over the following years. On each occasion, however, the response was that there was nothing untoward to look into, and the matter was not taken further at the time.
The doctor at the centre of the case was also referred to the General Medical Council, the body that regulates doctors across the United Kingdom, but that referral was initially set aside as well. For several years the warnings went unanswered, even as those raising them continued to press for the prescribing to be formally reviewed and brought to a halt.
It was only after legal action was launched that the authorities moved, ending the ability of Dr Sam Hall to prescribe the treatment and opening a formal investigation into the practice and what had taken place there. Dr Hall had been the clinician leading the service before the prescribing was stopped, and has since stepped down from the role at the centre of the inquiry.
In a statement published on its website, the WellBN practice said it wished to reassure its patients that it provides safe, high-quality care and support to the community it serves. It added that it was committed to working closely with NHS partners and regulators to address any recommendations identified within the report and to continue strengthening the services it provides.
The case has since fed into a wider reckoning over how such treatment was provided, with legal claims now being brought against organisations involved in delivering it. The NHS Sussex investigation into the WellBN practice, and the conclusion that children had been put at risk through the way the hormones were prescribed, remains the basis for the steps taken against the clinic and the clinician who led it.