The trust was responding to a report this month from an inspection made in March 2024 that downgraded the service from requires improvement to inadequate.

In publishing the report, the CQC acknowledged a follow up inspection in July 2024 had shown ‘some improvements' and would be published shortly.

Rob Assall, CQC's director of operations in the East of England, said: ‘When we inspected in March, we raised immediate concerns with the trust and demanded they took action to keep mothers and babies safe. In response, they set out a clear action plan and we inspected again in July to check these improvements had been made.

‘We saw evidence of steps taken to improve safety, including a telephone triage line and caesarean section waiting room area. We'll be publishing the findings from our July inspection - which details improvements alongside the work that still needs to be done – shortly.'

A CQC spokesperson added: ‘Due to a large-scale transformation programme at CQC, our report into maternity services at Broomfield Hospital was not published as soon after the inspection as it should have done. The programme involved changes to the technology CQC uses but resulted in problems with the systems and processes rather than the intended benefits. The amount of time taken to publish this report falls far short of what people using services and the trust should be able to expect and CQC apologises for this. While publication of some reports has been delayed, any immediate action that CQC needed to take to protect people using services will not have been affected and acted on appropriately. CQC is taking urgent steps to ensure that inspection reports are published in a much more timely manner.'

Chief executive of Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, Matthew Hopkins, said: ‘We have made significant improvements to our maternity service and acted on the feedback from inspectors immediately when they visited in March 2024. It was hugely disappointing to be rated inadequate in the March inspection, and to wait almost a year for this report to be released. It is also disappointing that we are still waiting for the report from the July inspection.

‘The CQC recognised the actions we have already taken to improve, and I want to reassure families that we are committed to providing high-quality, safe maternity care.'