Source · CQC inspection

Queen's Hospital

Provider Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust Type NHS Healthcare Organisation Region London Last inspected 3 Dec 2025

Overall rating: Requires Improvement View full CQC report

Domain ratings

Five CQC key questions

Safe

Requires Improvement

Effective

Good

Caring

Good

Responsive

Requires Improvement

Well-led

Good

Current CQC assessment

Single Assessment Framework

From 2024 CQC rates services through ongoing assessments rather than comprehensive inspections.

Requires Improvement Assessed 3 December 2025

The service is not performing as well as it should and we have told the service how it must improve.

Date of assessment: 20 August 2025. Queen’s Hospital provides a range of NHS hospital services. This assessment looked at maternity services to follow up on the concerns identified at the previous assessment, which we rated as requires improvement. The rating of maternity has been combined with the ratings of the other services from the last assessments. See our previous reports to get a full picture of all the other services at Queen’s Hospital. The rating of Queen’s Hospital remains requires improvement.

Ratings by service

Maternity

Good

Nov 2025

Maternity

Requires Improvement

Aug 2024

Regulatory breaches & enforcement

Current-framework "must do" equivalent

Breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, stated verbatim in the CQC assessment.

Letter of intent Overall

After the inspection, the CQC issued a Section 31 letter of intent, identifying significant risks.

· 17 Nov 2025 · CQC source

Breaches identified (4)

Breach Overall

As this was a focused assessment we only looked at the safe and well led domains, where there were breaches of regulation.

· 3 Dec 2025

Breach Safe

At this assessment we identified a breach of safe care and treatment.

Regulation: Regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) · 3 Dec 2025

Breach Safe

However, the service was in breach of the regulation for safe care and treatment, in relation to incidents and medicines management.

Regulation: Regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) · 3 Dec 2025

Breach Overall

Inspectors observed breaches of patient dignity and confidentiality, including unsecured patient notes and overcrowded waiting areas, which staff had not fully addressed.

· 17 Nov 2025

Earlier inspection findings

pre-2024 framework · 6 must-do 3 should-do

Must-do actions (6)

Legal requirements based on regulation breaches identified during inspection.

Must-do action 1 of 6

Must do

Well-led

The service must ensure patient records are kept securely in locked notes trolleys and that when patient records are in use, that they are not left unattended.

Regulation: Regulation 17 Good governance

⚠ During our inspection we saw that some patient records were left unattended within the department and not all trolleys were locked or lockable. We also found that not all patient records were consistent in the recording of risk assessments. In addition, we found that not all notes trolleys were locked …

Must-do action 2 of 6

Must do

Well-led

The service must ensure patient records consistently document risk assessments.

Regulation: Regulation 17 Good governance

⚠ Not all patient records were consistent in the recording of risk assessments. We found that not all paper patient records were consistent in the recording of risk assessments such as falls, the hourly safety checklist, skin integrity assessment and bed rail assessments.

Must-do action 3 of 6

Must do

Safe

The service must improve the safety of the rooms used for paediatric mental health patients.

Regulation: Regulation 12 Safe care and treatment

⚠ There were ligature risks within the mental health assessment rooms in children’s ED which meant that patients could not be left without supervision. The two rooms used for paediatric mental health patients included ligature anchor points so patients could not be left in these areas without supervision, which impacted upon …

Must-do action 4 of 6

Must do

Safe

The service must ensure that staff follow policy to identify and document patients who are on time critical medicines.

Regulation: Regulation 12 Safe care and treatment

⚠ Staff did not always follow processes to identify patients on time critical medicines. The triage notes were often left outside of their designated trays by the doctors, which meant nurses were not able to easily and readily locate them to administer these critical medicines. The administration records within one chart …

Must-do action 5 of 6

Must do

Safe

The service must ensure compliance with best practice around the use of piped air and medical gases.

Regulation: Regulation 12 Safe care and treatment

⚠ Piped air outlets were not always capped in line with recommendations of a national patient safety alert.

Must-do action 6 of 6

Must do

Safe

The service must ensure that mandatory training is regularly updated and plans to improve compliance are implemented.

Regulation: Regulation 12 Safe care and treatment

⚠ The service provided mandatory training in key skills however some compliance rates did not meet the trust target. Mandatory training compliance levels were averaging 80% which was below the trust target of 90%. The lowest compliance levels for nursing and medical staff were paediatric basic life support which was 54.3% …

Should-do actions (3)

Recommended improvements to enhance service quality.

Should-do action 1 of 3

Should do

Caring

The service should consider making improvements to the children’s emergency department’s mental health rooms to protect the dignity and privacy of patients.

Should-do action 2 of 3

Should do

Safe

The service should ensure that patients who are self-administering their medications are clearly risk assessed and this is documented, and these patients are identifiable in the ED to staff.

Should-do action 3 of 3

Should do

Responsive

The service should ensure national standards of care such as triage, handover and admission standards are met in line with legislation.