Yahoo News Maternity ward extension approved for Leicester hospital
Leicester General Hospital will get a new building to serve its maternity wards. The plan for the temporary building was approved by Leicester City Council’s planning department this week.
It will boast a new operating theatre, anaesthetic room and sterile prep room, as well as a scrub room and “dirty utility room”. The upper floor of the 1.5 storey building will be solely used as a plant room, plans show.
The new theatre will sit to the west of the existing maternity ward, accessed off Coleman Road in the city. It will have a link to the current ward.
Planning officers have granted temporary permission for the building. The University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust (UHL), which runs the city’s three hospitals, has said it is expected to have a lifespan of 60 years.
However, it would only be in its original location for 10 of these before it moves home. Officers have agreed it can be at the General for those 10 years. However, they said if plans change, the trust should not expect that permission to be extended and have included a condition in that approval stating it needs to be removed when the first decade of its use is up.
UHL chief nurse Julie Hogg said: "The new maternity theatre at the Leicester General Hospital will enable our teams to carry out planned and emergency procedures in separate areas, reducing the risk of delays. Our long-term plan will consolidate acute maternity services at the Leicester Royal Infirmary. The new theatre is designed to be adapted for future use by other clinical specialties."
Expanding maternity facilities at the General has previously been heralded as part of the plan to improve the service overall in Leicester. A damning report into maternity care was published by healthcare watchdog the Care Quality Commission last year.
It revealed there were not enough maternity staff to keep women and their babies safe. Both Leicester Royal Infirmary and Leicester General saw their rating for maternity care drop from 'good' to 'requires improvement' after an inspection and safety across the service received the lowest rating of inadequate. LeicestershireLive understands the plan for the new facility was first broached before these care concerns were raised.
The report led to families coming forward to share their experiences of maternity care in Leicester’s hospitals and to call for a national review of services across the country to ensure lessons are learnt. These include Preeti and Hrushikesh Joshi, the parents of Ansh who died at just two days old.
A follow-up inspection was carried out in January which noted improvements had been made, but there was still work to be done. The service across both hospitals remains rated requires improvement. However, the inadequate safety rating improved and is now also ranked at requires improvement.
Responding to the latest report, chief nurse at Leicester hospitals Julie Hogg said: “We have come a long way on our improvement journey since the 2023 inspection and further still from the latest inspection in January. In particular, we have made huge progress with staffing, one of the CQC’s key concerns, welcoming 29 midwives to the service since January 2024 and with 51 more due to start before November. Since last Autumn we have also recruited three new consultant obstetricians and nine speciality doctors.
“With additional safety measures in place to protect babies in our care, a new maternity theatre and day case assessment unit set to open this summer at the Leicester General Hospital and investment in technology to improve care during induction, many aspects of our improvement plans are already delivering positive results. We could not have achieved this without the hard work and dedication of colleagues across the services and it is good to see their contribution highlighted in the reports.
“We fully acknowledge we have much more to do to ensure our services are of the standard we want them to be and that our patients have a right to expect. We continue to seek and act on feedback, and I encourage anyone with concerns about their care to speak to us – we promise to listen to you and take your concerns seriously.”
