> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.ipswich.co.uk/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Midwives warn Ipswich maternity block 'not fit for purpose' as NHS mulls £98m replacement - URL: https://www.ipswich.co.uk/midwives-warn-ipswich-maternity-block-not-fit-for-purpose-as-nhs-mulls-98m-replacement/ - Published: 2026-10-20T07:19:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-20T07:19:00.000Z - Description: In 2021, inspectors found that Ipswich Hospital's maternity tower failed national design standards and that maternity services "required improvement". Five years on, midwives say almost nothing has changed, and a £98m plan to replace the building rests on a decision due within days. - Author: Oliver Rouane-Williams - Tags: Long Reads, East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT), Ipswich Hospital, Health & Care Services 💬 ****We want to hear from you.** Do you work at Ipswich Hospital, or have you or someone close to you been a patient? Whether your experience has been positive, negative or somewhere in between, we would like to hear it. Email Oliver Rouane-Williams at [oliver@ipswich.co.uk](mailto:oliver@ipswich.co.uk). We will not publish your name or any identifying details without your prior agreement. Earlier this month we reported that it could take 13 minutes to carry a labouring woman to theatre when the lifts in the maternity block fail. Since then, more midwives past and present have contacted us to raise further concerns. The Care Quality Commission inspected maternity services at Ipswich Hospital in April 2021, after "emerging concerns in relation to the safety and quality of the services". It found the service "requires improvement" and issued requirement notices under three regulations. We have tested each of its central findings against what the trust, its documents and its staff describe today. ## The theatre eight floors up CQC found obstetric theatres on level eight and the delivery suite on level four, a design that "did not follow national guidance". The trust's own risk register rated the theatre's separation from the rest of maternity as "high". East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT) first told us "a tower block arrangement is not uncommon, particularly where land is not available". Pressed to name another consultant-led unit in England with the emergency theatre on a different floor to the delivery suite, it conceded: "We are not aware of any other maternity service in England which has the same layout as the Ipswich maternity tower." One change has been made. In June 2024, an operative delivery room opened on the delivery suite floor for the most urgent caesareans and major haemorrhage, used routinely for women already on that floor. It serves one of three maternity wards, and it lost power twice this year, on 11 June and 6 August, during what staff describe as significant obstetric emergencies. The trust says there was no patient harm in either incident and that it recognises "how concerning these incidents were for colleagues working in the delivery room". One midwife told us the backup offered against a further lighting failure was a medical-grade head torch; the trust has not addressed this. [Thirteen minutes from tragedyA mother needs an emergency C-section, immediately. When the lifts serving Ipswich Hospital's maternity block aren't working – which, according to midwives, they often aren't – it could take 13 minutes to carry her to theatre. It could be too late. Ipswich.co.uk investigates.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/29/1e/291e4b7f-e551-4458-b546-61963954b22f/content/images/icon/ipswich-icon-bf8754c6-ead6-458f-9cde-207ae22df018.png)Ipswich.co.ukOliver Rouane-Williams![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/29/1e/291e4b7f-e551-4458-b546-61963954b22f/content/images/thumbnail/Hero-Image--69--3cf16cb4-ea8a-4fd3-9933-7d53ed92a153.png)](https://www.ipswich.co.uk/exclusive-thirteen-minutes-from-tragedy/) ## Drills that stopped The 2021 mitigation was a drill. The risk register required monthly simulation of emergency transfer to theatre. Inspectors asked for the records and found the last drills had taken place in February and March 2020\. "Leaders were unaware that mitigating actions were not being carried out," they concluded. The current lift failure procedure dates from June 2023, when it was created out of an earlier disaster recovery plan. It requires face-to-face lift failure drills monthly for obstetrics, anaesthetics, midwifery, theatres and neonates. Separately, it asks that knowledge of the evacuation process be tested "at least annually". Staff describe a much lower bar. The timed run that produced the 13-minute figure was "a one-off as far as I'm aware and has not been repeated recently", one midwife said, while another said the process is covered once a year, at the emergency training day. "Fortunately we have not had to use this process thus far to my knowledge," she said, "but that doesn't mean we won't have to in the near future." The timing, she added, does not account for a larger patient, or for a birthing population that is more complex than it was. ## Red status, but C-sections continue In 2021, CQC recorded that access on every floor was by lift shared with the public, with an emergency call card among the control measures. That card remains a listed mitigation at every status level. In recent months, it failed, according to staff, sending a patient to an alternative theatre that had problems of its own. "I cannot remember the last time all of our lifts were functioning at the same time," one midwife said, "and very frequently we have to manage on one lift for the entire maternity block." Patients and staff have been trapped in them. On the evening of Friday, 2 October, a lift failed and was not repaired until Tuesday. With a second lift already out for replacement, the block was down to one. The procedure is explicit about that scenario. It sets out that the failure of one lift while another is already out for planned replacement triggers red status, at which "patient safety significantly compromised", elective work is "suspended/relocated", and the senior team is told to prepare for the unit to go on divert should the last lift fail. The trust has not told us which status it applied that weekend, but based on the trust's own guidance, it should have been red. Despite that, staff said an additional operating list of patients from Colchester Hospital went ahead. "All births were caesareans on the additional list carried out," the trust said. It argues the surgery carried its own clock: planned caesareans "are time-sensitive", and delay brings risk. The decision followed a multidisciplinary review involving the director of midwifery, the obstetric clinical director, the matron, theatre teams, the consultant on call and the executive director on call. No major incident was declared. "We discussed the risk of proceeding and weighed them against the risks of not proceeding," the trust said. Asked whether that was written down, it replied: "We do not have a written record of this assessment." Asked whether the procedure requires elective work to be suspended at one lift, the trust confirmed it does, but then called it "an advisory framework". The document is a controlled procedure, version 3.0, written in numbered actions, status cards and checklists. The word advisory does not appear in it. ## Staffing CQC found in 2021 that the service "did not have enough maternity staff to keep women safe from avoidable harm", with midwifery shifts running at 90 to 92 per cent of template, maternity care assistant shifts lower still, and bank cover that it called unsustainable. The trust now says it has 17 midwives more than its establishment. The trust last set that establishment using the national Birthrate Plus methodology in November 2023\. The review is required every three years, and the trust says it commissioned a new one in March, due to be published next month. Staff do not dispute the number, only what it reaches. Short-staffed shifts remain regular, they say, driving sickness and long-term leave, which leaves the service shorter again. "It's a vicious cycle," one midwife said. ## Midwives speak up The 2021 findings on culture were blunt: staff who "did not always feel respected, supported and valued", concerns listened to but not acted upon, an escalation pathway staff bypassed, and several who referred to bullying. "Culture at the trust did not always encourage openness and honesty." The trust first told us there had been "no incidents of detriment, disciplinary action or confidentiality settlement agreements". Asked what period that covered, it narrowed the claim to June 2024 onwards — excluding the years in which staff say the warnings began. A former midwife told us she escalated serious concerns through successive levels of management. "It was dismissed," she said. She no longer works at the trust. A current member of staff was blunt about the present. "We are met by the senior leadership team with typical political responses and not much to evidence as change," she said. After our first article, midwives were sent a conversation guide for women who asked about it, telling them the 13-minute figure "relates to a practice exercise, rather than a delay experienced by a woman during an emergency". The same message told staff to avoid "blanket assurances that there is no risk" and to keep escalating concerns. ## The £98m question The trust has confirmed the maternity tower contains asbestos, and that it "has meant that there are limitations about how we can reconfigure the rooms in maternity services", while saying it has not materially delayed or added cost to the lift works. Every midwife who has contacted us, whatever else they disagree on, says the same thing about the building. "A new building has been required for years," one told us. "The maternity block itself is really not fit for purpose." Another put the frustration more bluntly: "In 2026, it seems utterly bizarre to me that a housing estate can be built in a matter of months, but one lift takes a whole year to be fixed." That decision to replace the tower now sits with NHS England. In September the trust said a £92m maternity and neonatal proposal was "progressing well", with an answer due in October. It has since described it differently: an expression of interest, for £98m, to the Estates Safety Fund, with the outcome expected within days. It is the only proposal on the table that ends the problem rather than managing it. Every alternative — the new lifts, the operative delivery room, the action cards, the drills — is a way of living with a tower block the trust itself cannot find a parallel for anywhere in the country, and which inspectors said five years ago was not built for the way maternity care has to work. The trust said on 16 October that the second new lift would be fully operational within a week. Work on the third will not begin until the new year. ## The bottom line In 2021, the regulator found high risks and mitigations that existed on paper while nobody checked they were happening. In 2026, there is a written procedure. It states that when the tower is reduced to one working lift, patient safety is significantly compromised, elective work must be suspended, and drills must be held every month. This month the block met the procedure's own trigger for red status. The elective work went ahead anyway. The decision to depart from the document was not written down. The drills, staff say, happen once a year – at best. The trust says no harm has been recorded to any mother, baby or patient during the refurbishment programme. It also knows of no other maternity unit in England built like this one. Its midwives have carried the distance between the plan and the building, and by every account given to us they have carried it well. Five years after the regulator spelt it out, they are still the ones carrying it. The Estates Safety Fund exists for buildings that compromise patient safety. By the trust's own procedure and the frontline staff who work there, this one does. Ipswich has waited five years since the regulator said so itself. The question now is: will NHS England fund the new maternity block Ipswich needs? We will report the decision and the response when it arrives later this month. 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