- NHS hospital
Milton Keynes Hospital
Assessment report published 3 October 2025
Ratings - Maternity
Our view of the service
Milton Keynes Hospital provides a range of NHS hospital services. This assessment looked at maternity services, which we rated as good. The rating from maternity has been combined with ratings of the other services from the last inspections. See our previous reports to get a full picture of all other services at Milton Keynes Hospital. The rating of Milton Keynes Hospital remains good.
Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (MKUH) formed in 2007 and operates all its clinical services from its main base at Milton Keynes Hospital. The hospital has 36 maternity beds that form part of the approximate total of 605 beds at the trust. There were 3730 deliveries recorded in 2023/24. The service provides inpatient antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal beds available for women and birthing people. Ward 9 provides both antenatal and postnatal care with a capacity of 25 beds. At the time of the inspection there was an escalation area that has 7 beds. This was formally opened on 31 August 2025 as Ward 10 and is referred as this in the report. There was an antenatal day assessment unit (ADAU) and a consultant led labour ward, triage and an early pregnancy assessment unit, theatres and a community midwife team.
We carried out this assessment of maternity services on 31 July and 1 August 2024 following information we received about poor staffing and the culture within the service. This was a focussed inspection, and we inspected quality statements across safe and well led. Safe quality statements assessed were learning culture, safe systems, pathways, and transitions, involving people to manage risks, safe environments, safe and effective staffing, medicines optimisation.
We identified breaches in regulation 18 staffing, regulation 17 good governance and regulation 15 premises and equipment.
Well Led quality statements assessed were shared direction and culture, capable, compassionate, and inclusive leaders, freedom to speak up, workforce equality diversity and inclusion, governance management and sustainability, partnerships and communities and learning improvement and innovation.
We did not inspect neonatal services as part of this assessment.
As part of the onsite assessment, we spoke with members of the maternity team at all levels including maternity assistants, junior doctors, registrars, consultant obstetricians and anaesthetists, midwives, matrons and senior leaders.
People's experience of this service
CQC carried out an annual maternity survey, this survey looks at the experiences of 25,515women and pregnant people, across 121NHS trusts, who gave birth in February 2023(and January 2023for smaller trusts).
Questionnaires were sent out between April and August2023; responses were received from 120 people at Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. For each question in the survey people’s responses were converted into scores, where the best possible score was 10 /10. Responses were about the same when compared to other trusts. For ‘labour and birth’ the patient response was 7.8/10; ‘staff caring for you was 8.0/10 and care in hospital after birth was 7.1/10.
During our onsite assessment, women, birthing people and any family or carers with them were mostly positive about the staff treating them with warmth and kindness and providing effective care and treatment. They said they were seen quickly when they arrived by trained midwifery staff to find out more about why they had attended. There were themes from feedback about timely access to breastfeeding support and not being left alone when worried during labour and birth.