{"id":807332,"date":"2026-10-19T07:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T07:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/807332\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T07:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T07:10:08","slug":"up-to-20-maternity-units-in-england-may-have-to-shut-nhs-leader-warns-nhs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/807332\/","title":{"rendered":"Up to 20 maternity units in England may have to shut, NHS leader warns | NHS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Up to 20 maternity units in England<\/a> will have to shut to ensure mothers and babies receive safe care amid shortages of doctors and rising caesarean section rates, an NHS leader has warned.<\/p>\n

Matthew Hopkins, the NHS<\/a> Alliance\u2019s director for acute care, said centralising childbirth services into fewer hospitals was \u201cinevitable\u201d and the \u201cright thing\u201d, but would lead to a political backlash against unpopular changes.<\/p>\n

Ministers must \u201cgrasp the nettle\u201d that as many as 20 of England\u2019s 155 NHS units that are led by consultant obstetricians will need to shut or change their role, he added.<\/p>\n

Hopkins urged ministers and MPs to show \u201ccourage\u201d by backing major changes to where maternity services are located, even though reconfigurations will lead to mothers-to-be in affected areas being forced to travel further to have their babies.<\/p>\n

Smaller maternity units that deliver only 1,500 to 2,000 babies a year are becoming increasingly unsustainable because of a widespread lack of obstetricians and a sharp rise in recent years<\/a> in the number of women having either a planned or emergency caesarean section, he added.<\/p>\n

Many of the units most at risk are in rural or coastal areas, where staffing is particularly challenging, he told the Guardian. \u201cWe are calling for a thorough appraisal of maternity services and where they need to be located because the current configuration is not fit for purpose,\u201d Hopkins said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDifficult decisions lie ahead, consolidating maternity services to support safer, more sustainable care.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf politicians \u2026 are keen to see safe maternity services in their area, it is going to need courage to grasp the nettle that needs to be grasped in order to improve maternity services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consolidation of care at fewer sites was \u201cinevitable\u201d and represented \u201cdoing the right thing \u2026 the safe thing for patients\u201d, he said. Maternity units with too few doctors could not provide the level of service needed to ensure safety, he stressed.<\/p>\n

Hospital bosses fear that the government\u2019s maternity taskforce<\/a>, which is due to publish a report on improving childbirth care before Christmas, \u201cwill be tokenistic and won\u2019t deal with the real strategic issues that underpin the problems\u201d if it does not set out clearly how the NHS should accommodate the rise in caesarean sections, which require units to have more staff and more operating theatres, Hopkins added.<\/p>\n

Matthew Hopkins said changes were needed to ensure the safety of mothers and their babies. Photograph: Graeme Robertson\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

But his comments provoked an immediate outcry, with obstetricians and midwives insisting that maternity care should remain a service the NHS provides near people\u2019s homes. \u201cWomen and families rely on local maternity units to be there when they need them, and we must ensure there are high-quality services close to home,\u201d said Hannah Leonard, the chief policy officer of the Royal College of Midwives.<\/p>\n

Dr Alison Wright, the president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said: \u201cThere are other solutions to our workforce challenges that are far safer than closing maternity units, and these should be explored.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hopkins\u2019s comments came as the Royal Devon university healthcare NHS foundation trust was expected to decide this week if the maternity unit at North Devon district hospital in Barnstaple, which shut temporarily in August<\/a> due to understaffing, now has enough doctors to allow it to safely reopen.<\/p>\n

Andy Burnham, in his first appearance at prime minister\u2019s questions on 2 September, admitted that maternity services across the whole UK were facing \u201cstructural issues\u201d. Burnham told the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, it was \u201cnot acceptable\u201d for expectant mothers from north Devon to have to give birth in Exeter, which is 43 miles \u2013 and a 70-minute car journey \u2013 from Barnstaple.<\/p>\n

An estimated 194 women<\/a> have had their child in Exeter because of the closure.<\/p>\n

The maternity unit at Yeovil hospital in Somerset reopened earlier this year after being shut for almost 12 months because it had too few staff. The maternity unit at Daisy Hill hospital in Newry, in Northern Ireland, was last month earmarked for closure for the same reason. Strenuous efforts by NHS bosses to recruit obstetricians from Ireland, the UK and internationally to work there failed.<\/p>\n

Closing rural and coastal units would put mothers and babies in danger, said Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrat health spokesperson. \u201cForcing women in labour to travel an hour or more to the nearest hospital is unsafe, unacceptable, and leaves local communities abandoned,\u201d she said, adding that ministers must not allow maternity services in rural and coastal areas to be \u201cshuttered\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hopkins \u2013 who has run four hospital trusts \u2013 is not the first senior figure to argue for major reconfiguration of maternity services to improve the quality and safety of care.<\/p>\n

Marian Knight, a professor of maternal and child population health at the University of Oxford, who investigates maternal deaths as part of the MBRRACE-UK research programme, told the Health Service Journal last month<\/a> that the NHS should consider \u201cconsolidation into fewer, bigger [maternity] units to help medical teams manage the surge in C-sections\u201d. They rose from 33% of births in England in 2020 to 45% last year.<\/p>\n

Some women who died during childbirth between 2022 and 2024 did so because their caesarean section was delayed or postponed because an obstetric surgeon or operating theatre was not available, the most recent MBRRACE-UK report found. \u201cIt was not clear if the safety of services is maintained in light of [the] increased demand [for caesarean sections]\u201d, it said.<\/p>\n

Urging immediate action on centralisation of care, Hopkins added: \u201cIf this C-section rate becomes 55% or 65%, [that] inevitably will force reactive actions being taken. In our view, [and] Marian\u2019s view, we need to grasp the nettle and get ahead of what could be really difficult conditions for mums, babies and staff if this rate of increase in C-sections continues to rise.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her government-commissioned review<\/a> of maternity care in June, Valerie Amos<\/a> revealed that senior figures in the field had told her that key challenges to improving care included \u201cpoor infrastructure, with, at times, unsafe and unacceptable estates \u2026 and too little (political) backing for difficult reconfiguration decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Department of Health<\/a> and Social Care did not comment directly on possible maternity unit closures.<\/p>\n

But a spokesperson said: \u201cEvery woman deserves safe maternity care, and the Secretary of State has made this issue a personal priority. Through the national maternity and neonatal taskforce, that she is chairing, this government will deliver the reforms needed to ensure services meet the needs of women and families now and in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Up to 20 maternity units in England will have to shut to ensure mothers and babies receive safe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-807332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807332","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=807332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}