Wave of NHS birth centre closures condemned as attack on women's right to choose

Campaigners have accused NHS officials of a "shocking" denial of women's right to have a midwife rather than a doctor oversee the birth of their baby, as growing numbers of birth centres across England are shut down.

Twelve midwife-led maternity units have closed in England since 2019. Such centres are central to giving women a genuine choice between delivering at a doctor-run hospital unit, at a unit where midwives take the lead, or at home.

Six of the units have closed permanently since Labour took office in July 2024: in Rossendale in east Lancashire, Edgware in north London, Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, Stafford and Lichfield in Staffordshire, and Pontefract in West Yorkshire. Four more have been under "temporary" closure for as long as six years, leaving childbirth groups doubtful they will ever reopen, while two others are out of action for several years because the hospitals housing them are falling apart and await replacement facilities.

The squeeze on choice extends beyond birth centres. NHS bodies in England and Wales have suspended home birth services for stretches of up to 14 months. Behind the trend lie a national shortage of midwives, a falling birthrate, increasingly complex births and a rise in caesarean sections. NHS organisations that opt to close units frequently cite an inability to staff them safely.

Hazel Williams, chief executive of Birthrights, said: "Over the past few years we have seen shocking restrictions on women and birthing people's choices of place of birth, with more and more birth centre closures and restrictions and the option for NHS-supported home birth vastly reduced for many." She added: "These are not luxury options or nice-to-haves. This is about women and birthing people's right to choose what happens to their bodies and their birth."

The Royal College of Midwives cautioned that women unable to get midwife-led care through the NHS may turn to private midwifery services or even deliver at home with no health professional present. Tope Medupin, acting chief executive of the National Childbirth Trust, said the loss of a local service brings "longer journeys, higher costs, greater uncertainty and fewer options for care at one of the most important times in their lives", adding that women being expected to travel ever further "cannot simply become the new normal."

Several cases illustrate the pattern. Huddersfield's birth centre closed in November 2020 as a Covid-19 measure and remains shut six years later, with the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS trust saying no reopening decision has been made and no timeframe can be given. The Ingleside centre in Salford, opened only in 2018, has been closed since January 2022. In Crowborough, east Sussex, births were halted in October 2025 because staffing gaps forced repeated short-notice closures. Nusrat Ghani, the MP for Sussex Weald, accused the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells trust of breaking "numerous promises" and ignoring mothers facing journeys of up to 90 minutes, and suggested the "temporary" label may be a way to dodge the public consultation a permanent closure would require.

There is limited good news. Gloucester hospitals trust said last week that Cheltenham birth centre will reopen in February after four years shut, with home births resuming in January. But a senior NHS leader has warned that as many as 20 consultant-led maternity units at acute hospitals in England could have to close to keep mothers and babies safe, and proposals in Norfolk would shut units at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in King's Lynn and the James Paget hospital in Great Yarmouth in favour of centralised care in Norwich. The North Devon district hospital unit in Barnstaple has also been closed for months over staff shortages.

Hannah Leonard, chief policy officer and deputy chief midwife at the Royal College of Midwives, said: "Women have the right to choose where they give birth, but that choice is being eroded." Health secretary Yvette Cooper is expected to publish an action plan on the crisis in maternity and neonatal care in England before Christmas. A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said every woman and baby deserves safe, compassionate care, noting that strengthening the workforce is central to that effort and that more than 600 midwives were added in the past year, bringing numbers to a record high.