- NHS hospital
Great Western Hospital
Assessment report published 10 July 2026
Ratings - Maternity
Our view of the service
The maternity inspection took place between the 20 and 21 January 2026 and was a planned inspection of the service due to the requires improvement rating at the last inspection in 2024.
Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust provides care to the population of Wiltshire and the surrounding areas. Great Western Hospital provided both obstetric maternity services and a midwifery led birthing unit. Between January to December 2025 there were 3639 births within the trust.
We carried out a full comprehensive inspection of the service looking at all of the 5 key questions, safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led.
Maternity services included an outpatient’s area consisting of antenatal clinics, maternity triage called the maternity care centre and the day assessment unit. The delivery suite had two obstetric theatres and there was a midwifery led birthing unit called the White Horse birthing unit. Hazel ward provided antenatal and postnatal care as well as transitional care for babies.
Community midwifery teams provided midwifery care to women throughout the antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal period, working in various community hubs. At the time of inspection, home birth care was delivered by the community midwifery teams, not a separate home birthing team.
We found at the time of the inspection there were 77 open incidents, with the trust focused on closing the number of overdue open incidents, meaning there was not full oversight of risk and performance and a delay in the service being able to take action to drive improvement where required in a timely way.
The modified enhanced observation warning scores (MEOWS) audits were well below the trust target and the service had identified areas of staff non-compliance when using the tool. This meant there could be a delay in identifying deterioration in women’s health and responding to risk.
However, the service had a new leadership team and staff felt supported by senior colleagues. They worked together to make sure women made informed decisions based on best practice guidelines.
The service worked closely and had positive relationships with the local Maternity and Neonatal Voices partnership (MNVP). The MNVP engaged regularly with leaders to ensure voices of women were heard and feedback was passed on, including a bi-monthly triangulation of feedback meeting.
Compassionate leadership was demonstrated by all leaders, and the service had a maternity strategic plan for improving maternity services.
There was a breach of regulation 17 good governance, in relation to the service not being assured auditing systems, setting targets and benchmarking processes were embedded.
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
All women we spoke with were positive about the service. Women told us they felt safe, well supported and cared for by both the midwifery and medical teams. Staff explained risks and involved people in the decision-making process.
Staff were described as “professional”, “understanding” and “kind”. 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 to drive improvement across the service.