State of care: maternity services

The Care Quality Commission's (CQC, 2024a) annual state of health and adult social care report summarises the performance of health and social care providers in England and highlights key themes. Maternity services are prominent as an area of concern. The report reiterates the findings from the CQC's (2024b) national maternity inspection programme, which covered 131 maternity providers not inspected since before March 2021. In that programme, almost half (47%) were rated ‘requires improvement’ (36%) or ‘inadequate’ (12%) overall. That position worsens to 57% for the 195 NHS maternity services in the CQC (2024a) state of care report. This represents the worst performance of the >34400 services covered.

The CQC's foremost concern was the safety of maternity services. The 2024 report showed that 45% of services were ‘good’ and 12% ‘inadequate’. Only 3% were ‘outstanding’, although this proportion is higher when the data for the five services that provide both maternity and gynaecology are included. This clearly highlights the importance of continuing with ongoing work to improve maternity services. Key issues found were unsafe practices, outdated and unsuitable facilities and staffing difficulties.