The CQC rated Stroud Maternity Hospital good in all five areas on 27 August, up from requires improvement. Its postnatal beds remain suspended.

The Care Quality Commission has rated Stroud Maternity Hospital good in every one of its five categories. The report was published on 27 August 2026 and lifts the Field Road unit out of the requires improvement rating it was given after an inspection in December 2023.

Safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led are all now rated good, as is the service overall. (CQC, Stroud Maternity Hospital)

What the inspectors found

The CQC assessed 30 quality statements across all five key questions. Inspectors visited the antenatal clinic, the birthing rooms and the closed postnatal beds. The report records 87 births at Stroud in the twelve months from November 2024 to October 2025. (CQC assessment report, maternity)

On the areas that failed last time, the report says:

  • women received one to one care during labour
  • staff were trained in safeguarding
  • staff assessed each woman’s suitability to give birth at the unit
  • care was delivered in line with current evidence and best practice

The praise from patients is unusually direct for a regulator’s report. Inspectors spoke to women and their partners at the antenatal clinic and quote them saying “I had 1 to 1 care, it was amazing” and “care here is second to none”.

The report is not uncritical. It records that incident investigations were sometimes delayed and that pharmacy support was not available at the unit. On leadership it says “not all senior leaders were visible or approachable”, and that leaders “were developing a new strategy to guide staff”.

The single negative comment inspectors heard from women at the clinic was about not being able to stay at Stroud after giving birth.

The postnatal beds are still shut

That comment points at the thing the rating does not fix. The trust’s own page for the unit carries a one-line notice: “Please note that the postnatal beds at Stroud are currently suspended.” (Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Stroud Maternity Unit)

The trust said in March 2024 that the six postnatal beds had been “temporarily closed since September 2022”, with midwifery staff centralised at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital to protect one to one care in labour. It said then that recruitment had made good progress but that safe staffing levels had not yet been reached to allow the beds to reopen. (Trust statement, 20 March 2024)

Almost four years after they closed, the beds have not reopened. That is why CQC inspectors were shown them as “closed postnatal beds” during the assessment.

The rating describes the unit as it was last September

One detail matters for anyone reading the rating as a guide to the unit today. The CQC states the date of assessment as 16 September 2025. The report reached the public on 27 August 2026, eleven months later.

The December 2023 inspection was a focused one, looking only at the safe and well-led areas of the service, and it found breaches of Regulations 12 and 17 of the health and social care regulations, covering safe care and treatment and good governance. This time the CQC assessed all five key questions and says the service “had made improvements since the last inspection”.

What it means for you

You can still give birth at Stroud, and you can still be sent home the same day. The trust says the Field Road unit is open 24 hours a day for labour and birth, and describes it as a midwife led centre handling around 100 births a year. There are no postnatal beds, so you cannot stay overnight afterwards. The trust also says that if you need an epidural, or if there is an unexpected problem with you or your baby, you may be transferred to the delivery suite at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital.

The unit is not closing. In an FAQ dated April 2026 the trust states: “Stroud Maternity Hospital is not closing, and there are no plans to close it.” It says a staffing review launched in June 2025 is aimed at reinstating home births and reopening the Cheltenham birth unit alongside Stroud. (Trust FAQs, April 2026)

If you want to raise something about your care, the CQC takes feedback on any service at any time through its give feedback on care form, and the trust runs its own complaints route. The regulator says the feedback it receives shapes when and where it inspects next.

For how local NHS services are performing more widely in the district, see our breakdown of the 2026 GP Patient Survey results for all 13 Stroud practices.