AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD boy who suffered brain damage hours after he was born has won his long fight for compensation from a hospital.

A judgement obtained in the High Court in Newcastle against the city's Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI) opens up the way to an award of damages expected to exceed £1m.

Michael Coulson, known as Mikey, of Morpeth, Northumberland, was born at the RVI in February, 1994.

His mother, Dawn Lee, had alleged he had been the victim of negligence on the part of staff, who failed to recognise the signs of his dangerously-low level of blood sugar when he was only hours old. Mikey went on to have fits and to suffer brain damage.

Although the hospital denied sub-standard care, its agreement to judgement for 75 per cent of the damages was approved yesterday by a judge who also awarded a substantial interim payment of damages.

John Kitchingman, a clinical negligence specialist at the Manchester law firm Pannone and Partners, who represented Mikey and his mother, said: "This money is to compensate Mikey, not only for the negligence relating to the period just after his birth, but also for the full-time care and support that he now requires and will continue to for the rest of his life."

Ms Lee said: "No amount of money is going to compensate Mikey or me, but I am pleased that the hospital has at least now accepted that it will have to compensate Mikey."

A spokesman for Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust said last night: "The sequence of events leading to Michael's unfortunate and very regrettable brain injury was complex and unusual.

"The trust would wish to apologise for the events leading to Michael's injuries and have taken steps to ensure that a similar course of events does not arise again.