- NHS hospital
Stroud Maternity Hospital Also known as Stroud Maternity Unit
Assessment report published 27 August 2026
Ratings - Maternity
Our view of the service
Date of assessment: 16 September 2025
We conducted an on-site, comprehensive assessment of maternity services provided by Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust at Stroud Maternity Hospital. At our last focused inspection in December 2023, where we looked at elements of safe and well-led maternity services were rated as requires improvement. We found breaches of Regulations 12 and 17.
At this assessment we assessed all quality statements from the safe, effective, responsive, caring, and well-led key questions.
We found maternity services had improved from requires improvement to good.
The number of births recorded from November 2024 to October 2025 for Stroud Maternity Hospital was 87.
Safe:
Staff were trained in safeguarding to ensure women and their babies were protected from abuse. Women received 1 to 1 care during labour, and staff assessed each woman’s suitability to give birth at this location to support safe care. While incident investigations were sometimes delayed, and pharmacy support was not available, the service was taking steps to strengthen these areas.
Effective:
Women’s needs were assessed and reviewed, including communication, personal, and health requirements. Care was delivered in line with current evidence and best practice. Individuals had adequate nutrition and hydration, and staff worked with partner agencies to ensure continuity of care and positive outcomes. Health was monitored to support wellbeing, and staff provided clear information to enable informed consent.
Caring:
Women and their families were treated with kindness and compassion. Staff respected privacy and dignity, supported individual preferences, and ensured choice in care. Staff responded promptly to needs. The service mostly supported staff wellbeing.
Responsive:
Women were involved in decisions about their care and received clear, accessible information. They understood how to provide feedback and were confident it would be acted upon. Care was accessible, fair, and non-discriminatory. The service worked to reduce health inequalities through training and feedback, and women were informed of their options, including the right to decline care.
Well led:
Leaders were developing a new strategy to guide staff. Not all senior leaders were visible or approachable. Staff understood their roles and responsibilities. Managers engaged with the local community to improve care and demonstrated openness to new ideas.
People's experience of this service
We spoke with women and their partners who were attending the consultant and midwifery antenatal clinic. All comments were very positive and included, “amazing care throughout a previous pregnancy, supportive and well informed”, “antenatal clinics run by the midwives are an excellent resource, well informed and prepared for birth and postnatal period”, “birth plans are encouraged”, “I had 1 to 1 care, it was amazing”, “care here is second to none” and “numerous support groups run from here which include breast feeding support”. The only negative comment we received was about women not being able to stay in Stroud Maternity Hospital following the birth of their baby.
CQC undertakes a yearly Maternity Survey to collect feedback from women about their experiences of care during pregnancy, birth, and the postnatal period, covering aspects like choice, safety, and staff communication. It runs annually to help NHS trusts identify improvement areas, monitor service quality, and inform future inspections, with results often highlighting both progress and ongoing challenges. We have used results from the 2024 (latest) survey. Women were eligible for the survey if they had a live birth under the care of a participating trust in February (and in some cases, January) 2024 and were aged 16 years or over at the time of giving birth.
In comparison with other trusts, Gloucestershire NHS Foundation Trust scored about the same for 47 questions and better than expected for the remaining 10 questions.
There was 1 comment from this survey which related to Stroud Maternity Hospital. One woman described attending Stroud Maternity Hospital due to severe pain, only to be told by a midwife that she 'could tell by looking' that the patient wasn’t in active labour, leaving the woman feeling dismissed and unwelcome.
We contacted Healthwatch but they did not have any feedback about maternity services to share. Healthwatch is an independent statutory body, who listen to people’s feedback and report back to providers to improve standards of care.