Pausing of births to be extended at Melton Mowbray baby unit

The announcement was made in a document sent to local stakeholders this week by the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Integrated Care Board (LLRICB).

The health board announced last summer there would be a pausing of births and in-patient post-natal care for six months from July last year at St Mary’s Birth Centre.

With that deadline having now elapsed, the LLRICB say those services will not be restarted in the immediate future and it now wants to hear from families about the impact on them of having the Melton services suspended.

The board say services at the birth centre are no longer cost-effective due to a very low number of births, staffing issues and more women having complex needs which cannot be treated there.

The announcement will come as a devastating blow to the hundreds of campaigners who marched through Melton Mowbray on August 30 to show their support for the town’s baby unit.

Save St Mary’s Birth Centre (SSMBC), which organised that event, said that it was ‘devastated’ by the update.

Explaining the latest situation today (Wednesday), Julie Hogg, chief nurse at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust said: “Pausing births and inpatient post-natal care at St Mary’s Birth Centre in July was a difficult but necessary step to ensure the safety of women and babies, after longstanding challenges with staffing and birth numbers worsened.

“These services will remain paused until the ICB’s decision-making process has concluded.

"Community-based ante-natal and post-natal clinics in Melton Mowbray continue without interruption, and midwifery-led care remains available through the home birth team, as well as at Leicester Royal Infirmary and Leicester General Hospital.”

The SSMBC group said in a statement also released today: “We received confirmation this week in the form of a stakeholder briefing that the Leicester Leicestershire and Rutland Integrated Care Board and University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust have - despite their recently announced engagement exercise - no intention of reopening St Mary’s Birth Centre.

“It is our firm belief that the language of ‘temporary’ and ‘pause’ was always disingenuous and that our fears over the announcement last summer indicating closure by the back door, were in fact well founded.”

The stakeholder document also states that plans to create a new standalone midwife-led unit in Leicester have now been abandoned due to a funding shortage.

This means that services at the Melton baby unit will instead be relocated to Leicester General Hospital.

On this, the SSMBC campaign group commented: “We are angry that the Trust is now reneging on its promise to relocate services to an alternative centre (as per the consultation process in 2021), rather than remove choice altogether from those giving birth in the future.

“We are devastated that post-natal care is taking a backwards step for families right across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.”

The campaigners also reject many of the reasons given by the health board for pausing births at St Mary’s and ultimately relocating services to Leicester.

“We would like to remind the decision makers that this does not align with current government plans to move health services from hospitals to communities and we see no reason to preclude maternity care from this agenda,” the statement adds.

“We maintain issues around safety are primarily about staffing which is solvable, and point out that the CQC have never been concerned about safety itself at St Mary’s.

“We utterly reject the position taken that doing this offers ‘more women greater choice’ when what it is doing is reducing the services on offer.”

They are ‘disappointed’ about a lack of wider public engagement on the services at the birth centre and the board’s perception that centralising maternity services will be fairer for families across the area.

The statement adds: “We are concerned that justifications offered around equitable access of maternity care ignore the needs of and the barriers faced by rural communities and their demographics.

“We believe this to be a resourcing matter and that all avenues to explore creative and alternative solutions to closure have not been properly explored.”

It costs £1M a year to run the birth centre and the board say that is no longer cost-effective with fixed costs increasing and 92 women giving birth there in the year to July 2025, less than one per cent of all births in the LLRICB area.

The document sent to stakeholders says there is a reliance on temporary staff at St Mary’s which also pushes up the cost of the service and that more pregnant women were presenting there with complex needs which require closer obstetric or neo-natal support which is not available at the Melton unit.

The health board had long-term plans to consolidate all maternity services in Leicester but funding issues have delayed this happening.

The delays meant St Mary’s could have stayed open until 2035 but the new announcement makes it increasingly unlikely that births will be resumed there.

Local women will have to travel to the city to access midwife-led units and consultant-led delivery suites at Leicester Royal Infirmary and Leicester General Hospital.

The health board now wants feedback from families and staff who have been impacted by the extended six-month pausing of births and in-patient post-natal services at St Mary’s Birth Centre

It wants to hear from those who were planning or considering giving birth at Melton’s baby unit between July 2025 and September 2026 but who were (or are) unable to do so because of the pause.

Feedback is also sought from family members or carers of these individuals, staff who worked at St Mary’s before the pause and students working in maternity services locally.

Go to https://leicesterleicestershireandrutland.icb.nhs.uk/be-involved/smbc-engagement/ to comment if you are one of those people listed above.