- NHS hospital
Royal Sussex County Hospital
Assessment report published 17 December 2025
Contents
Ratings - Maternity
Our view of the service
Date of assessment: 26 to 27 February 2025.
The maternity service at Royal Sussex County Hospital (RSCH) forms part of University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust maternity services which also includes Worthing Hospital, St Richards Hospital and Princess Royal Hospital. We assessed the maternity services to determine if they had made improvement since our last comprehensive inspection in 2021, when the service at RSCH was rated inadequate. We had also completed a focused inspection in 2022 which was not rated.
We carried out an unannounced assessment of the maternity services at Royal Sussex County Hospital. This assessment was in response to information of concern we received associated with risk within the service.
Following the focused inspection in 2021, we saw improvements, but the service was in breach of regulation 12: safe care and treatment in relation to triage processes and checks on lifesaving equipment. The service had made improvements and was no longer in breach of regulations in relation to this.
Although we saw improvements during this assessment (2025) the service remained in breach of regulations. The overall rating for the Maternity service has improved from inadequate to requires improvement overall.
At this assessment we inspected this service using our single assessment framework and looked at all the key questions and 33 quality statements.
Royal Sussex County Hospital provides obstetric and midwifery services along with community midwifery care. The service includes pre-conceptual care, early pregnancy care, antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal care. The maternity unit includes an early pregnancy unit, obstetric consultant-led delivery suite, maternity assessment centre (triage), and wards for antenatal and postnatal care.
Approximately 9,000 babies are born within the service each year RSCH accounts for 2,444 births reported from January 2024 to January 2025.
We visited the following areas as part of the assessment:
Postnatal and antenatal wards, triage and assessment areas, the early pregnancy unit, the theatre and recovery area and labour suite. We also looked at bereavement facilities, and outpatient areas including antenatal consulting areas and pregnancy scanning.
We spoke with 12 patients and 2 relatives/carers. We reviewed 8 patient records. We spoke with more than 35 staff which included: consultants, resident doctors, midwives including specialist and community-based midwives, matrons, senior leaders, maternity support workers, administration staff, pharmacists, housekeeping staff, and student midwives.
We rated this service as Requires Improvement. We found 5 breaches in regulations. The service was in breach of legal regulation(s) in relation to people’s safe care and treatment and governance.
The breaches related to appropriate management of risks including induction of labour and caesarean section delays, medicines management, safeguarding and the premises at Sussex House. We also found breaches in relation to the governance of the service. The breach was in relation to risks not being addressed in a timely manner, staff access to patient information, assurance through auditing systems, setting of targets and benchmarking processes. Staff could not easily access information in one place on mothers or babies to ensure risks are appropriately managed.
We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment.
We refer to women in this report, but we recognise that some transgender men, non-binary women and women with variations in sex characteristics (VSC) or who are intersex may also use services and experience some of the same issues.
People's experience of this service
Women and any family or carers with them were all positive about the staff treating them with warmth and kindness and providing effective care and treatment. We spoke with 12 women on site and reviewed information from a range of sources including the NHS Friends and Family Test (FFT). The FFT is an important tool to help people who use NHS services have the opportunity to provide feedback on their experience.
Women had access to contribute and feedback about their experiences through the local Maternal and Neonatal Voices Partnership (MNVP) who also feedback to the trust regularly. We also reviewed the results of the CQC Maternity Services Survey 2024. The survey gathers feedback from women about their experiences with maternity services. The trust ranked 18th out of 56 in 2024 which was an improvement on 20th in 2023.
Records showed women were given the tests they needed promptly, and they felt staff were on hand if they needed them for help or support. Women said they did not feel anxious about raising concerns. We assessed women’s care throughout pregnancy, including antenatal, postnatal triage and labour.