A summary of the report said births and inpatient postnatal care at St Mary’s Birth Centre had been paused since July 2025 due to significant safety and workforce risks arising from very low birth numbers and the inability to maintain safe 24\/7 midwifery cover. <\/p>\n
“With only 92 births in 2024\/25, less than 1% of all UHL births, the centre is operating below what is considered sustainable for a freestanding midwifery-led service,” it stated.<\/p>\n
Helen Cliff, founding member of Save St Mary’s Birth Centre Campaign, said “We’re devastated but not surprised.”<\/p>\n
She said a previous temporary closure of the centre had felt like “closure by the back door and, sadly, that’s what it’s proven to be”.<\/p>\n
“This is about where women feel safest and most comfortable to give birth and about choice,” she added.<\/p>\n
“There are a number of women who don’t want to give birth in hospitals.”<\/p>\n
“We have got to protect that choice for women.”<\/p>\n
She added that the postnatal ward was “being lost in the discussion” around the birthing centre’s future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A summary of the report said births and inpatient postnatal care at St Mary’s Birth Centre had been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-475705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}