Updated 15 August 2025
We assessed University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust for leadership using our standard methods. This included interviews with staff across the whole organisation, including members of the trust board and senior clinical leaders, evidence provided by the trust and stakeholders, and data and intelligence we hold about the organisation.
Although undertaken through our previous methodology, our last assessment of the well-led key question at trust level rated the organisation as good. This assessment maintains that good rating, although with some areas to be improved.
We assessed each of the eight new quality statements for the trust and have reported on the excellent practice in many areas, as well as those that need to be improved.
The 2023 NHS Staff Survey, which was the most current at the time of our assessment, reported on areas of culture and wellbeing that needed to be improved. However, we recognised a strong vision and strategy for the organisation that was aligned to all its plans and objectives. There were capable, compassionate and inclusive leaders who led with integrity with patients at the centre of leadership values. There was a good culture of speaking up although some progress needed to be made to improve how staff felt about their voice making a difference. There was commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion, but there was a need to show how actions were having an impact in this area.
There was a good standard of governance including in systems of accountability, but the board needed to be able to demonstrate it was learning and making sustainable change and improvement. There was good partnership working and collaboration with health and social care stakeholders. The trust was a leader in areas of innovation, research and development. However, the trust needed to demonstrate it learned from adverse events and those they affected, including avoidable deaths of patients with a learning disability or mental health needs. The trust was making good progress around environmental sustainability with some significant projects having major impacts. However, some clarity was needed in some areas of reporting.
Summary of this organisation
University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust is one of the larger NHS teaching hospital trusts in England, serving a local population of around a million people. It is the principal teaching hospital for Warwick Medical School.
There are two hospital locations: Hospital of St Cross, Rugby, and University Hospital, at Walsgrave, Coventry. The trust also runs a minor injuries unit based in Coventry city centre and there are advanced plans for a community diagnostics hub also in the city centre. University Hospital has been a designated type 1 major trauma centre for around 12 years – one of four in the West Midlands. It has a standalone paediatric emergency department co-located with the adult emergency department. There is a nurse-led urgent treatment centre at the Hospital of St Cross. In July 2024, the trust acquired adult community services for the Coventry population. The staff working for the previous NHS trust were transferred to this trust along with services and patients.
The trust was established in 1992 and expanded to include the Rugby hospital in 1998. The Hospital of St Cross was opened in 1884 and many of the original buildings are still in use. The hospital has 110 beds and six operating theatres with advanced plans to focus the hospital as a surgical centre and change the use of the rehabilitation patient beds. The Maple Unit, the trust’s haematology and oncology centre, opened in 2021.
The relatively new University Hospital in Coventry opened in 2006 and has 1,005 beds and 26 operating theatres. The hospital was built as a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) project on the site of the old Walsgrave Hospital at a cost of £440mn. This now single site is located on the eastern edge of Coventry and replaced the Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital which was located at the time in the city centre.
The city of Coventry is ethnically diverse, with recent census data reporting 45% of the population identified as from an ethnic minority group compared to 26% in England. Around 56% of schoolchildren identified as being from an ethnic minority background, so the population is expected to become more diverse. The recent census also reported that around a fifth of Coventry’s population lived with a disability. In statistics around deprivation, last gathered in 2019, Coventry had become less deprived when compared with 2015 (moved back from 59th worst deprived to 81st) – one of only two areas in the West Midlands to have achieved this. Warwickshire’s place in the deprivation index fell by one place in the most deprived areas to 119th worse deprived.