Health bosses axe birth centre

Mums, who have given birth at the Jubilee Birth Centre in Cottingham, say the service is something the region should be proud of.

But chief executive of Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust Phil Morley said they couldn’t afford to keep the service in its current format.

The trust needs to make £95m savings by 2015 and says the move will save £856,000 a year, mainly because of more flexible staffing.

The centre, which opened nine years ago, closed last July after a visit by the Care Quality Commission said it had “major” concerns about staffing levels. Mr Morley said: “The decision we have taken means that women who book to have a midwifery-led birth will be certain to receive that service. Furthermore we believe that this will make midwifery-led birth a more viable option for more women in our region.

“Since it opened in 2002 we have never seen many more than 350 births a year – less than one a day – at the Jubilee Birth Centre.

“By moving the service to Hull Royal Infirmary we hope to see as many as 1400 midwifery-led births per year.”

The trust says the Jubilee Centre is losing £125,000 a year, because the amount paid for a birth by the primary care trust is less than the cost of the service. Mr Morley said in the current financial climate, they “could not possibly justify providing additional staff at the Centre at the expense of another hospital service.”

But mums said it would force women to make a difficult choice between giving birth in a medicalised setting or at home. Rachel Arundel, who gave birth there, said they would lose “something important and special”: “We have something that demonstrates best practice; we should be singing its praises, not closing it down.”