- NHS hospital
St Helier Hospital and Queen Mary's Hospital for Children
Assessment report published 11 June 2026
Contents
Ratings - Urgent and emergency services
Our view of the service
St Helier Hospital is run by Epsom and St Helier Hospitals NHS Trust. The urgent and emergency care service at St Helier Hospital consist of an adult emergency department (ED) and a paediatric ED.
We carried out an announced assessment of urgent and emergency care at St Helier Hospital on 2 and 3 December 2025 in line with our assessment priorities. We returned for an unannounced assessment on 11 December 2025.
Overall, the service was rated as requires improvement.
We assessed 25 quality statements from safe, effective, caring, responsive, and well led key questions. We rated safe, caring, responsive, and well led as requires improvement. The service was in breach of legal regulation in relation to Regulation 10, Dignity and Respect, Regulation 12, Safe Care and Treatment, and Regulation 15, Premises and equipment, Health, and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. We have requested an action plan for the trust to address this.
We looked at 26 sets of patient clinical records; we spoke with 15 patients, 7 family members or friends, and 39 members of staff. We visited and observed all areas of the ED including the main ED, triage and waiting areas, ambulance handover, urgent treatment centre, resuscitation area, majors, same day emergency care (SDEC), rapid assessment and treatment (RAT) area, and the paediatric ED.
We assessed quality statements within key questions. Each quality statement assessed is awarded a score. Details on how we score can be found on our website: https://www.cqc.org.uk/about-us/how-we-do-our-job/ratings.
You can find further information about how we carried out our assessments at:
https://www.cqc.org.uk/about-us/how-we-do-our-job/what-we-do-inspection.
People's experience of this service
Many patients told us staff treated them with kindness, compassion, and dignity. Patients, their families, and carers spoke highly of staff, and felt staff were approachable, visible, and kind.
Most patients, their family, and carers were positive about the care and treatment they received. However, some of them stated that they were not happy about the length of time spent in the ED.