Maternity Care Survey 2025: national report
Findings on women's experiences of antenatal care, labour and birth, care in hospital or a midwife-led unit, care in a neonatal unit, care at home / in the community and feeding their baby.
Background
The Maternity Care Survey aims to provide local and national insights into the quality of maternity services from the perspective of the women using them. The specific objectives of the survey are:
For national improvement:
- to inform national planning and monitor performance
- to monitor and evaluate the implementation of recommendations from The best start: five-year plan for maternity and neonatal care
- to identify variation within and between local areas, including if and how the level of positive and negative experiences have changed over time
- to highlight areas of best practice and areas for improvement
- to contribute to public awareness of maternity experience.
For local improvement:
- to provide NHS boards with information about experiences of care in their respective areas and about variation within and between local areas, highlighting where things are going well and where they could be improved
- to provide hospital level results, where there are sufficient responses.
Maternity and Neonatal Care in Scotland
Scotland's national maternity and neonatal strategy, The Best Start: a five-year forward plan, was published in 2017. A central aim of the programme was to improve outcomes and experiences through continuity of care, informed choice, a new model of neonatal care and care provided as close to home as possible. In May 2025, the Scottish Government published a report describing key actions and achievements delivered through the implementation of The Best Start programme. The findings of this survey will be used as one of the sources of evidence for the evaluation of The Best Start.
In 2025 the Scottish Government published a suite of maternity policy and clinical guidance documents, including the Pathway of Maternity Care and a Racialised Health Inequalities Action Plan. That year Healthcare Improvement Scotland began a programme of unannounced inspections in obstetric maternity units. In March 2026 Healthcare Improvement Scotland published new Maternity Care Standards, setting out clear expectations for the quality and consistency of care women and families can expect throughout pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period.
In June 2026 the Scottish Government commissioned an independent review of maternity services in Scotland. The review will make a broad assessment of current and future maternity care needs, with a focus on rural and island services, care for women at risk of poorer outcomes, and workforce and governance. The findings from this survey will be shared with the Maternity Review and will help shape future policy and service development.
Outputs
On the Maternity Care Survey collection page, the following outputs are available for the 2025 survey:
- An Excel spreadsheet showing results at national level
- An Excel spreadsheet showing results broken down by respondents' geographic and demographic characteristics including health board of residence, health board of care at the end of pregnancy, hospital of birth, Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, Urban-rural 6-fold classification, ethnicity, long-term conditions, main language and age band
- An Excel spreadsheet showing comparable 2018 and 2025 positive-neutral-negative questions
- A technical report with details of the survey design and methodology.
The terms ‘woman’/’women’ have been used throughout this report and the terms refer to people who are biologically female. We recognise that some of the people covered in this survey may not identify as women.
An Official Statistics Publication for Scotland
These statistics are official statistics. Official statistics are statistics that are produced by crown bodies, those acting on behalf of crown bodies, or those specified in statutory orders, as defined in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.
Scottish Government statistics are regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.
More information about Scottish Government statistics is available on the Scottish Government website.