YEOVIL — Somerset NHS Foundation Trust will reopen maternity services and the Special Care Baby Unit at Yeovil District Hospital, following their closure in May 2025 after the Care Quality Commission raised safety concerns over staffing, equipment and learning from serious incidents. The trust addressed the concerns by recruiting staff, combining its workforce with Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton, and improving its facilities and training systems.

"We are really confident we have done what we need to do to really meet the standards we need," said Professor Deirdre Fowler, chief nurse and chief midwife at the trust. She added: "It's really important that we have strengthened governance and leadership and that we are able to recognise risk and respond really quickly."

Sally Bryant, director of midwifery at Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, described how staffing had been managed during the closure. "Many staff have come across to our Musgrove site to work and some others to neighbouring trusts," she said.

Bryant said preparations for the reopening had focused on governance and clinical standards. "We have worked really hard on strengthening leadership, aligning our guidelines," she said.

Amanda Ford, a registered nurse and midwife who worked for the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch in the region from 2019 until 2020, described earlier concerns at the hospital. "Within a month I just was appalled. One was a baby death. That's a death that shouldn't have occurred – of a very healthy baby," she said. She described another case: "One was a lady who was put through labour, who basically shouldn't have been labouring, and she was lucky to have survived that and her baby survived."

An expectant parent who gave birth to her son Leo at Yeovil District Hospital in 2021 and is expecting her second child in July had been unaware that the unit had been closed for safety reasons.