- NHS hospital
John Radcliffe Hospital
Assessment report published 4 June 2026
Ratings - Maternity
Our view of the service
Date of assessment: 7 to 10 October 2025.
Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust covered a wide geographical area and was the main tertiary unit which meant it provided specialised advanced care for complex or rare conditions that could not be managed by local secondary or primary services. Therefore, the volume of complex patients was higher than normal NHS foundation trusts.
Services include pre-conception care, antenatal clinics, fetal medicine, triage, obstetric-led and midwifery-led units, inpatient wards, maternity theatres, transitional care, bereavement support, and community midwifery. Around 7,000 women, people and babies are cared for annually. Maternity services include three standalone midwifery-led units at the Cotswold Birth Centre, Wantage Maternity Unit, and Wallingford Maternity and Birthing Centre. In addition, there is a midwife-led birthing centred at Horton General Hospital which we inspected separately. These units provide intrapartum care for people assessed as having low-risk pregnancies.
We visited the maternity assessment and triage unit, fetal medicine, the obstetric-led delivery suite, maternity theatres, ‘The Spires’ midwifery-led unit, bereavement services, the ante and postnatal wards, transitional care and 3 standalone midwifery-led units at Wantage, Wallingford and Cotswold Birth Centre. We spoke with 39 staff members, including doctors, midwives, nurses, support workers and leaders. We reviewed feedback from people who use the service and spoke directly with 13 patients to hear their views. We observed care and treatment, reviewed patient care records, and examined the trust’s performance and audit data.
We previously inspected John Radcliffe Maternity in 2021. At that inspection we told the provider it must make improvements to prevention of infection, ensure women are assigned a lead professional at their first appointment, ensure women are risk assessed at every appointment, ensure safe systems and process for medicines administration, ensure they have a regular audit mechanism, and they must improve their culture.
We refer to women throughout this report, but we acknowledge that some transgender men, non binary people, and people with variations in sex characteristics (VSC), including those who are intersex, may also use maternity services and experience similar issues.
We refer to the ‘reporting period’ throughout this report which is November 2024 to October 2025.
Overall Maternity Service Rating • Maternity services scored 85 overall
Overall rating for maternity is Good. However, we rated safe as requires improvement as we found 7 breaches in regulations which related to safe care and treatment, environment, infection prevention control, staffing, and good governance.
People's experience of this service
Feedback from people during the inspection period was generally positive, with many of the 13 women we spoke to describing staff as compassionate, kind and “lovely and caring.” Women under community teams valued continuity of care and clear explanations of their care pathways. They also appreciated having information available in multiple formats. Results from the 2024 CQC maternity survey reflected improvements, particularly in antenatal care, where women felt supported with mental health needs and well-informed about choices. Support for partners had also improved, with more reporting they could stay during maternity care, and 80% of women felt their concerns during childbirth were taken seriously.
Despite these improvements, women highlighted areas needing further development. Concerns included gaps in bereavement support, inconsistencies in postnatal care and instances where women were left alone, affecting their sense of safety and emotional wellbeing. Access to the Spires midwifery‑led unit was also sometimes restricted, meaning women who had planned for a low‑intervention birth were transferred at short notice to the acute delivery suite, leaving some feeling their expectations were not met.