- NHS hospital
Queens Hospital
Assessment report published 13 November 2026
Ratings - Maternity
Our view of the service
University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust provide maternity services at both Queen's Hospital Burton and the Royal Derby Hospital sites. From June 2025 to May 2026 there were 2,462 babies born at Queen's Hospital Burton.
We rated the maternity service at this inspection as requires improvement overall.
We conducted this short announced comprehensive inspection on 24 June 2026 to follow-up on the 2024 inspection findings when the service was rated requires improvement. We looked at the safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led domains.
We visited the following areas as part of the inspection: the maternity assessment unit which incorporated triage, labour ward, theatre and recovery, the maternity ward that incorporated antenatal and postnatal inpatients, and community midwifery. We also looked at bereavement facilities. We did not visit the antenatal clinic which was used for outpatient appointments. We spoke with 23 members of the maternity team including maternity assistants, resident doctors, registrars, consultant obstetricians and anaesthetists, band 5, 6, and 7 midwives, student midwives, specialist midwives, matrons and members of quadrumvirate leadership team and their deputies. We spoke to 9 women in the early stages of labour and 7 post-natal women. We also spoke to the partners and relatives of women. The community service is a trust wide service but has been reported on and included in the rating for Royal Derby Hospital as this is where the management of this team lay.
We rated the service as requires improvement. The service had not addressed all the concerns found at our last inspection. However, there had been changes in some areas to improve the processes to keep women and babies safe. There was an improvement in how women were involved to understand and manage risks, and in the use of risk management tools.
The service was in breach of three regulations. We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment for a breach of Regulation 18, staffing, Regulation 12, safe care and treatment and Regulation 17, good governance.
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 using the maternity service told us they had positive experiences of the care and support they received. We spoke with 10 women during the inspection, they consistently described care as high quality, responsive and person-centred. Women told us staff listened to them, involved them in decisions about their care and treated them with kindness and respect.
Women said they felt supported throughout their maternity journey and were able to access care when they needed it. They told us staff responded to their individual needs and concerns, and they felt confident raising questions or discussing their preferences.
The service provided opportunities for women and families to share feedback and contribute to service development. Women could provide feedback through the local Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership (MNVP) and the Friends and Family Test (FFT). This enabled women to influence improvements and share their experiences of the service.
Patient satisfaction within maternity services was consistently high. The latest data showed a maternity satisfaction rate of 92.62% in April 2026 and 92.61% in May 2026. This indicated that most women and families who provided feedback reported a positive experience of the care and support they received, although a small proportion reported that their experience did not fully meet their expectations
The service participated in the Care Quality Commission (CQC) Maternity Survey 2025. Results showed the trust performed similarly to other NHS trusts in England across most areas of the survey, indicating women’s experiences were generally in line with those reported nationally. The trust scored about the same for 54 questions, and ‘better than expected’ for one question, and ‘worse than expected’ and ‘somewhat worse than expected’ for three questions.