The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has again rated maternity services run by Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust as requires improvement following an inspection in May 2025.
CQC inspected maternity services at Nottingham City Hospital and Queen’s Medical Centre. At this inspection, CQC identified three breaches of regulation at both hospitals related to security, staffing and management of the service. CQC told the trust to submit an action plan showing what action it is taking in response to these concerns.
At both hospitals, CQC has again rated how safe and well-led each maternity service is as requires improvement, and how effective, caring and responsive they are as good.
Roger James, CQC director of hospitals, said:
“During our inspection of maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, we found the trust were committed to making improvements, but still needed to make further improvements to ensure women and their babies were being kept safe.
“The service didn’t have an appropriate system and process to check identification bands of both baby and mother if separated for treatment which created risks for families and raised safeguarding concerns.
“It was disappointing that leaders didn’t ensure there were enough medical staff with the right qualifications, skills, and experience to keep people safe. This needed to be addressed urgently, and leaders also needed to make sure all staff were up to date with relevant training.
“However, it was encouraging to hear from people who were enthusiastic about the care they received. They praised kind and compassionate staff for their support throughout pregnancy, birth and postnatal experiences. The service had a homebirth team that facilitated over 100 homebirths in a year, and helped plan births and reduce the risk that women who wanted to have a homebirth faced.
“When assessing their needs, staff involved women and reviewed care plans regularly throughout pregnancy. They made sure they understood their care and treatment while supporting them, and provided care based on best practice.
“Although the trust was working hard on the improvements we told it to make, leaders still had more work to do to embed these into services and make sure their changes were sustainable. We’ll continue to closely monitor the trust to keep women and their babies safe while this happens.”
Inspectors found:
- Leaders weren’t visible in the service and some staff told inspectors they weren’t supportive.
- Leaders didn’t always share learning from incidents effectively with staff to make improvements. While they encouraged staff to provide feedback, they didn’t always listen to their concerns or ideas about how to improve the service.
- The leadership team didn’t have enough capacity to spend time consulting on and implementing a maternity specific vision and strategy.
- Staff didn’t always raise concerns as they felt neither the maternity leadership nor the trust would take any action.
- The service didn’t have sufficient security arrangements in place to keep people and babies safe. Leaders hadn’t held a baby abduction drill recently, and some staff were unable to tell inspectors what they would do if an abduction happened.
- Some people were concerned about receiving care in a service that had been under so much scrutiny due to previous failings.
However:
- The service gathered people’s feedback in multiple ways including through the NHS friends and family test, which reported 97% positive feedback for the month CQC visited.
- Staff knew what incidents to report and how to report them, and managers investigated these thoroughly, involving people and their families in these investigations.
- Leaders worked with partner organisations and maternity partnership networks to deliver quality care and identify ways to improve services.