Following a CQC inspection in January 2025, a report was published in June highlighting significant concerns regarding safety, staffing, and repeated failures to meet care standards regarding children and young people’s services. Yeovil District Hospital was rated ‘Inadequate’ overall, with particularly poor ratings in the categories of ‘Safe’ and ‘Well-led’.

Yeovil Hospital is an acute care facility operated by Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, following the merger of Yeovil District Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust on 1 April 2023. The hospital serves approximately 185,000 patients.

Role of the CQC:

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England. Its mission is to ensure that individuals receive safe, effective, compassionate, and high-quality care. The Commission promotes improvement by monitoring, inspecting, and regulating services to ensure they meet fundamental standards.

During its inspection of Yeovil District Hospital, the CQC found that the paediatric service was severely understaffed, with an inadequate number of suitably qualified professionals. As a result, the hospital was unable to meet patient needs, leading to the temporary closure of the paediatric unit. The report also highlighted a lack of learning from mistakes: although staff were aware of incidents and reported them, they failed to apply lessons learned to future patient care.

Key Findings:

Most significantly, national guidance was continuously breached by consultant paediatricians and associate specialists by failing to tend to children admitted to hospital within 14 hours of them attending the emergency department.

Furthermore, national guidelines require that child protection medical assessments be conducted within 24 hours by consultant paediatricians. However, upon review, only 89% of children were assessed within this critical timeframe, falling short of the expected standard. This delay in assessment can have serious consequences. Children at risk of neglect may go unnoticed, and vital evidence of mistreatment can deteriorate or disappear within 24 hours. Such lapses underscore the importance of timely intervention and strict adherence to national safeguarding protocols.

In total, Yeovil Hospital’s children’s services were in breach of 6 legal regulations.

Immediate actions taken:

Following the inspection, the trust has proactively closed the hospital’s special care baby unit and subsequently inpatient maternity services for an initial period of 6 months. There will be formal review of the closures after 3 and 6 months.

Trust leaders expressed their dedication to focus their attention on the areas which require improvement. They will continue to monitor these services to ensure progress is made to keep children and young people safe.

According to Karin Smith Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care) Labour MP for Bristol South claimed, ‘the government continues to work with the NHS as it delivers its three-year maternity and neonatal plan to improve maternity and neonatal services.’

If you or a loved one have experienced issues with care from maternity services at Yeovil Hospital and have suffered injury as a result, please contact our clinical negligence team to explore how we may be able to help.