Maternity services at two Leeds hospitals have been downgraded from “good” to “inadequate” by the healthcare regulator, because their failings posed “a significant risk” to women and babies. Concerns from staff and patients around quality of care and staffing levels were substantiated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) during unannounced inspections at Leeds Teaching Hospitals (LTH) NHS Trust.
England’s regulator has now issued a warning notice which requires the trust to take immediate action to improve. Neonatal services have also been downgraded from “good” to “requires improvement”. Over the past six months, the BBC has spoken to 67 families who say they experienced inadequate care at the trust, including parents who say their babies suffered avoidable injury or death.
During its December 2024 and January 2025 inspections, the CQC found official regulation breaches relating to risk management, safe environment, learning following incidents, infection prevention and control, medicines management and staffing. Areas of concern highlighted in the maternity units at both hospitals included people being “not safe” and “at risk of avoidable harm”, babies and families not always being supported and treated with dignity and respect, leadership being “below acceptable standard” and not supporting the delivery of high-quality care, staff being reluctant to raise concerns and incidents, and staff struggling to provide their desired standard of care because of staffing issues.
LTH provided evidence to the CQC showing it had reported 170 maternity “red flag incidents”, indicating there had been staffing issues, between May and September 2024. The CQC’s findings also highlighted staffing concerns in neonatal services at both hospitals, with a shortage of qualified staff to care for babies with complex needs. This coming autumn, the trust says 35 newly qualified midwives are due to start work and it has also appointed additional midwifery leadership roles.
The regulator will be monitoring the trust’s services closely, including through further inspections, to make sure patients receive safe care while improvements are implemented. One family who told the BBC they believe their child would have survived had they received better treatment is Amarjit Kaur and Mandip Singh Matharoo, whose baby was stillborn in January 2024.
All 67 families who have spoken to the BBC want an independent review into the trust’s maternity services – and a group of them have asked Health Secretary Wes Streeting for it to be led by senior midwife Donna Ockenden. Chief executive of LTH, Prof Phil Wood, said in a statement: “My priority is to make sure we urgently take action to deliver these improvements.” The trust is committed to providing “safe, compassionate care”, he added, and has already started making improvements, including recruitment, and addressing concerns around culture.
We deliver more than 8,500 babies each year and the vast majority of those are safe and positive experiences, he said. But we recognise that’s not the experience of all families.
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