Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve maternity services in Leicestershire.

Following Care Quality Commission inspections in January 2024, the trust has strong improvement plans in place for maternity services at the Leicester Royal Infirmary and Leicester General Hospital (LGH). Many actions from both the 2023 and 2024 inspections are already complete or well underway, with key achievements including a targeted improvement programme for Induction of Labour, and implementing a new Telephone Triage system to reduce delays and improve experience.

In September and November, the University Hospitals of Leicester (UHL) respectively opened a new maternity theatre and a new day assessment unit at the LGH, meaning that planned and emergency caesareans can take place in separate areas, further improving access to non-urgent appointments. The UHL have also welcomed 40 midwives, with 28 more due to start before the end of 2024. The trust has also recruited three new consultant obstetricians, alongside nine speciality doctors. The UHL have over 230 student midwives in training, and the trust is also seeing a higher proportion of permanent employees, with the turnover rate reducing to just over 7%, as of April 2024, versus 10% the previous year.