Maternity extension approved for Leicester hospital

Leicester General Hospital will have 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, anesthesia suite and sterile preparation room, as well as a washroom and ‘dirty utility room’. The top floor of the 1.5-story building will be used exclusively as factory space, the plans show.

The new theater will sit to the west of the existing maternity hospital, accessed from Coleman Road in the city. It will have a link to the current section.

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Planning officers have granted temporary permission for the building. University Hospitals Leicester NHS Trust (UHL), which runs the city’s three hospitals, said it was expected to have a lifespan of 60 years.

However, it would only be in its original location for 10 of those before moving home. The officers agreed that he could be at the General for the 10 years. However, they said that if plans change, the trust should not expect that permission to be extended and included a condition in that approval stating that it must be removed when the first decade of use ends.

UHL Chief Nurse Julie Hogg said: “The new maternity theater at Leicester General Hospital will allow our teams to carry out planned and emergency procedures in separate areas, reducing the risk of delays. Our long-term plan will strengthen acute maternity services at Leicester Royal Infirmary The new theater is designed to be adapted for future use by other clinical specialties.”

The expansion of maternity facilities at the General was previously mentioned as part of the plan to improve the general service in Leicester. A damning report into maternity care was published by the health watchdog, the Care Quality Commission, last year.

It revealed that there are 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 within the service was given the lowest rating of inadequate. LeicestershireLive understands that the plan for the new facility was first approached before these care concerns were raised.

The report has led to families coming forward to share their experiences of maternity care in Leicester hospitals and calling for a national review of services across the country to ensure lessons are learnt. Among them are Preeti and Hrushikesh Joshi, Ansh’s parents who died just two days apart.

A follow-up inspection was carried out in January, which found that improvements had been made, but there was still work to be done. The service in both hospitals remains rated as requiring improvement. However, the inadequate safety rating has improved and is now also ranked as requiring improvement.

Responding to the latest report, Leicester Hospitals Chief Nurse Julie Hogg said: “We have come a long way on our journey of improvement since the 2023 inspection and beyond since the most recent inspection in January. In particular, we have made huge progress in staffing, one of the CQC’s key concerns, bringing 29 midwives into service from January 2024 and a further 51 due to start before November. Since last fall, we have also recruited three new consultant obstetricians and nine specialist doctors.

“With extra safety measures in place to protect the babies in our care, a new maternity theater and day case assessment unit opening this summer at Leicester General Hospital and investment in technology to improve care during induction, many aspects of our improvement plans are already yielding positive results. We could not have achieved this without the hard work and dedication of colleagues across all services and it is good to see their contribution highlighted in the reports.

“We fully recognize that we have much more to do to ensure that our services are at 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 and take your concerns seriously.”