- NHS hospital
Worthing Hospital
Assessment report published 23 September 2026
Ratings - Maternity
Our view of the service
We carried out an assessment with a short announcement period of the maternity services at Worthing Hospital on 21 and 22 April 2026. The service formed part of University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust maternity services, which also included Royal Sussex County Hospital, St Richard’s Hospital and Princess Royal Hospital.
We inspected the service using our single assessment framework and assessed all key questions and quality statements. The service provided early pregnancy care, antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal services. Facilities at Worthing Hospital included an obstetric consultant-led delivery suite, a maternity assessment (triage) area, antenatal clinic and a ward for antenatal and postnatal care.
Between April 2025 and March 2026, the trust reported 8,270 births across its maternity services. Worthing Hospital accounted for 1,880 births in this period.
The trust entered the Maternity Safety Support Programme (MSSP) in February 2022. NHS England leads this national programme to support maternity services where concerns about safety and quality have been identified. Leaders developed a maternity improvement plan and monitored progress through a 2 monthly Maternity Improvement Group. The trust had planned to move into the sustainability phase of the MSSP by mid-2025 and to exit the programme later in 2025. However, this progress had been delayed after the trust was included in a rapid national investigation into NHS maternity and neonatal services. This showed that, although the trust had taken steps to improve, external concerns continued to affect progress against planned milestones.
We carried out an unannounced assessment of maternity services in February 2025; we rated the service as good. During that assessment we identified breaches of regulations relating to safe care and treatment and good governance. These related to management of environmental risks, medicines management, safeguarding training, assurance through auditing processes and the setting and monitoring of targets and benchmarking.
At the 2026 assessment we rated the service as requires improvement. We found 2 breaches in the regulations in relation to safe care and treatment and governance.
The breaches related to safeguarding training and environmental risks.
We also found breaches in relation to governance of the service, The breach was in relation to out of date guidance, delays in commencing audits programmes, slow progress in updating policies, the lack of oversight of risks of and medicines management systems.
The service was previously in breach of the legal regulation in relation to safe care and treatment. The breach was in relation to a lack of risk assessments of ligature risks in the maternity environment. The service had made improvements and had up to date risk assessments and is no longer in breach of regulation in relation to this.
Although we found some improvements, the service had not fully addressed all concerns found the previous assessment. We identified ongoing breaches in relation to safe care and treatment and good governance. This indicated that, although leaders had taken some action, improvements were not yet fully embedded or sustained across all areas.
We visited all areas of the maternity department at Worthing Hospital as part of this assessment.
We spoke with 14 women and relatives. We reviewed 11 care records. We spoke with more than 20 members of staff which included: consultants, midwives, senior leaders, maternity assistants, administration staff, estates staff, pharmacists and housekeeping staff.
In this report, we refer to women; however, we recognise that some transgender men, non-binary people and individuals with variations in sex characteristics (VSC), including intersex people, may also access these services and experience similar issues.
Following the assessment, we asked the provider to submit an action plan to address the concerns identified.
People's experience of this service
Women and families, we spoke with gave positive feedback about staff and described them as kind and caring. We spoke with 14 women and relatives during our inspection and reviewed feedback from a range of sources, including the NHS Friends and Family Test (FFT).
Women told us about the support they had received, and the kindness and compassion shown by staff. Women were consistently positive when providing feedback about midwives looking after them.
While many women and families were satisfied with their care, our assessment identified areas where the service did not meet expected standards. In particular, women attending the maternity assessment and triage areas were not always treated with dignity and respect.
The FFT gave people using the service an opportunity to share their experience of care. Women could also provide feedback through the local Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership (MNVP), which regularly shared feedback with the trust.
We reviewed the results of the 2025 CQC maternity survey, which gathered feedback from women about their experiences of maternity services. We referenced these findings throughout the report to support our assessment of the service.