Your witness statement

Your investigator will create a witness statement for you from the information you provided in your interview. Although this might not always be necessary.

Receiving your witness statement

Your investigator will send you a copy of your witness statement as soon as possible after your interview. Once you’ve received it, you should read and check it carefully to make sure it accurately reflects what you saw and what happened.

Any exhibits (documents) you talk about in your statement will also be sent to you, so you should check these are correct too.

If any part of your statement doesn’t reflect your account, you should change or add to it. Your investigator can help with this.  When you’re satisfied that your statement is accurate, you should sign, date and return it to the investigator as soon as possible.

What happens to your witness statement

A copy of your witness statement, any the other witness statements in the case and an accompanying report from the investigator, will all be passed to the case examiners. A copy will also be sent to the nurse, midwife or nursing associate under investigation.

We won’t share your witness statement or any exhibits you refer to with any other witnesses and we won’t share any other witnesses statements or exhibits with you. This is to make sure our cases remain fair.

For more information, please see our Fitness to Practise information handling guidance.

Why does the person under investigation have to see a copy of the witness statements?

By law, we need to give a nurse, midwife or nursing associate 28 days to comment on our findings and the evidence that’s been gathered.

It’s important that the nurse, midwife or nursing associate knows what information we have about them, and how we’re going to use it in their case. Sharing this information gives them a fair chance to answer the case and give their own explanation of events.