The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has upgraded the rating of maternity services at Royal Derby Hospital from requires improvement to good, and re-rated Queens Hospital Burton, as requires improvement, following a June inspection.
The hospitals, run by University of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust, provide a range of NHS services for those in surrounding areas.
Royal Derby Hospital's maternity service was upgraded from requires improvement to good in all areas: safe, effective, caring, responsive, and well-led.
Queens Hospital Burton maternity service was rated good for effective, caring, and responsive, and rated requires improvement for safe and well-led.
CQC found Queens Hospital Burton was in breach of three regulations relating to staffing, safe care and treatment, and overall management of the service, and Royal Derby Hospital was in breach of two regulations relating to staffing and incident reporting, both relating to community services. CQC has told the trust to submit a plan showing what action it is taking in response to these concerns.
Sarah Ivory-Donnelly, CQC deputy director of hospitals, secondary and specialist healthcare in its central region, said:
Following our inspection of both hospitals, we found sustained improvements had been made at Royal Derby Hospital, but some more work is still needed.
Women told us frontline staff at both hospitals were kind and compassionate. We also saw this in responses to our national maternity survey. The trust was meeting all ten points of a national safety action plan, which outlines best practices for maternity and neonatal services.
We found records showed staff assessed women’s needs well and designed care plans to meet them. This process involved a comprehensive risk assessment and considered people who would benefit from tailored adjustments, including neurodiverse people, and people with learning disabilities, mental health conditions or language barriers. It was clear women and their wishes were at the centre of care.
While Queens Hospital Burton has made improvements in some areas, we still had concerns. Leaders hadn't fully addressed incident reporting concerns identified at a previous inspection, with staff reporting that raising those issues internally had been actively discouraged. We also found there wasn’t always enough staff to keep women safe at the hospital or within the community midwifery team.
Some women experienced delays in receiving reviews, as our inspectors observed one woman waiting for ten hours to see a doctor. We also saw records that showed some women had self-discharged while awaiting assessment, and there were three further incidents of a delay to time critical care were reported.
We are pleased that some solid progress has been made, but we have been clear where more improvements are needed and will be closely monitoring their progress.
Inspectors found at Royal Derby Hospital:
- Leaders and staff worked with people and healthcare partners to establish and maintain safe systems of care, in which safety was managed or monitored. They made sure there was continuity of care, including when people moved between different services.
- Staff supported people to manage their health and wellbeing to maximise their independence, choice and control. Enabling people to live healthier lives and where possible, reduced their future needs for care and support.
- Staff made sure that medicines and treatments were safe and met people’s needs, capacities and preferences.
- Staff assessed and managed the risk of infection. They detected and controlled the risk of it spreading and shared concerns with appropriate agencies promptly.
Inspectors found at Queens Hospital:
- Staff didn't always safely and securely store human tissue, putting people at risk of infection. Inspectors found placentae in a room accessible to people and unauthorised individuals.
- The hospital was within the highest 25% of reporting organisations for third and fourth-degree perineal tears and postpartum haemorrhage of 1,500ml or more. Data for January 2026 showed a slight improvement but still below national average.
- Maternity theatre staff had a 98 and 100% compliance rate with the World Health Organisation surgical safety checklist in the three months we looked at.