Your frequently asked questions

Subject to meeting essential safety criteria, we intend to reopen the Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) and inpatient maternity service at Yeovil District Hospital (YDH) on 21 April 2026.

We are committed to providing safe, high quality and sustainable services and have been working closely with maternity and paediatric teams. 

In the first three months, as of September, the trust has taken the following steps to develop a Somerset paediatric service.

We:

• have appointed a clinical director for the county-wide paediatric service.
• have agreed with the South West Deanery that, from this month, paediatric resident doctors in training will work across both YDH and MPH.
• recruited from a strong field of candidates for consultant paediatrician roles to work across both acute hospitals and play a leading role in the design and implementation of the Somerset-wide service.
• have redesigned the paediatric consultant rota in line with national standards to ensure there are sufficient senior, skilled and experienced paediatricians working during the paediatric service’s busiest periods, out of hours and weekends so that it can be implemented when new consultants start.
• are scoping the development of a Paediatric Assessment Unit at YDH to ensure timely assessment and treatment of the most unwell children and young people.
• are addressing other areas of concern highlighted by the CQC including governance systems, education and learning, and culture.

The trust is also taking the opportunity to make improvements to the maternity unit at YDH while it is temporarily closed. Essential repairs have been undertaken to install new fire doors and improved security. Improvements to the maternity theatre to develop a dedicated obstetric recovery area are being planned.

Since the start of the temporary closures on 19 May up until the week ending Sunday 5 October, 354 babies have been born who would have been born at YDH.

• 135 were born at Musgrove Park Hospital (MPH)
• 174 were born at Dorset County Hospital (DCH)
• 13 at the Royal United Hospital in Bath
• 9 were born in other hospitals
• 23 were born at home.

A number of changes have been made at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton to create additional capacity in maternity services. Antenatal clinics and scanning services have been moved into the Parkside building to create additional space for maternity triage services. There are now an additional 10 maternity beds, and a dedicated transitional care area to support women and birthing people to stay with their babies if they require special care. 

In 2024, improvement work was also completed to provide an additional theatre space for emergency caesarean procedures at MPH.  

In addition, the home birth service at YDH will continue as normal. Service users will be contacted by their midwives to discuss the changes to hospital services and discuss the choices with them. 

Maternity and neonatal teams are working in partnership together, to regularly discuss and review the numbers of women and birthing people who have requested to transfer their care to other local hospitals.  

Regular meetings are taking place each week to review the impact of the temporary closures on maternity and neonatal services at Musgrove Park and other partner hospitals. 

We are confident that all service users due to give birth at Yeovil Hospital will be safely accommodated through the alternative options available. 

Maternity colleagues have reviewed the potential impact of longer journey times as part of an Equality Impact Assessment and clinical risk assessment. 

Community midwives will continue to support antenatal care in Yeovil and the surrounding areas, where pregnant women will continue to have personalised care plans and additional support in place where required. When considering the option of a home birth the travel distance and ambulance response times will be considered, and the service has been strengthened with additional midwifery colleagues from YDH to support additional service user requirements. 

Information on how to get support with travel costs and community transport services has been shared with service users and is available on the trust’s website – Travel advice for maternity care – Maternity. 

We are also working closely with the ambulance service (SWASFT), and emergency department colleagues to develop clinical pathways to support decision making for ongoing clinical responses and to ensure that the right services can be provided.  

The maternity triage number is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week and supports all pregnant women and birthing people across the county. Additional advice will be shared with anyone who is concerned or worried about where to get help in an emergency and contacting their midwife. 

We are continuing to work closely with Somerset Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership, our NHS partners, service users and colleagues to encourage and take in to account all feedback received. 

We will continue to update the information on our website.  

We welcome your feedback. If you would like to share any information about your experience, you can do so through our dedicated page – Sharing your feedback – Maternity

Maternity and neonatal staff at Yeovil Hospital who are affected by the temporary closure, are continuing to be supported by the trust’s colleague wellbeing and support service and HR colleagues and have moved in to temporary roles to support the service. 

This includes alternative roles within Somerset NHS Foundation Trust to temporary relocate to Musgrove Park Hospital and other community maternity services. 

In addition, there are also individual discussions taking place to consider other potential opportunities for temporary relocation in partner maternity and neonatal services including Dorset County Hospital and Royal United Hospital, Bath. 

With the planned opening date set for April, our teams will continue to support colleagues to return to the Yeovil maternity unit.

The Care Quality Commission inspected our paediatric services in January and issued a Section 29A warning notice because it assessed that the paediatric care we provide at Yeovil Hospital (YDH) requires significant improvement. We have also experienced high levels of sickness amongst senior paediatricians at YDH which has caused gaps in our rota. This directly impacts the YDH inpatient maternity service because we cannot care for any newborns who require care in a Special Care Baby Unit, so we are unable to safely provide care during labour and birth at the Yeovil Maternity Unit. 

In addition, the paediatric service at YDH has had high levels of sickness, with four out of six substantive consultants on long term sick, which has caused big gaps in rotas and a reliance on locums.  

Senior paediatricians from Musgrove Park Hospital are supporting the service at YDH, to ensure that paediatric inpatient and outpatient services at YDH are open for those who need them. However, we are not able to support the SCBU in the same way and therefore we must close it temporarily on safety grounds. 

Despite putting in place extensive mitigations over the last few months, including a recruitment drive, we have not been able to make the required improvements and due to concerns about the fragility of maintaining a safe, resilient paediatric rota – particularly out of hours and at weekends – a decision was reached with NHS partners on Monday 12 May to temporarily close the Special Care Baby Unit at YDH from Monday 19 May 2025, which also means that we are unable to safely provide care during labour and birth at the YDH maternity unit. 

On Tuesday 13 May, we started to talk to the staff who are directly impacted by these temporary changes, our wider stakeholders and service users. We also shared an update with the media. 

Although communications were developed and shared at pace, we were unable to share advance, detailed information about the temporary closures and we apologise for this.