Maternity Services: Standards

The Government and NHS England remain committed to ensuring safe, personalised, and evidence-based maternity care, grounded in informed choice. We will translate Baroness Amos’s National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation recommendations and Donna Ockenden’s national recommendations from her review of Nottingham University Hospitals maternity services into a single, national action plan to drive systemic and sustained improvement across maternity and neonatal care. The National Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce will oversee the development of this action plan and hold the system to account for improving outcomes and experiences for women, babies, and families, as well as staff.

Maternity services are already responding to increasing complexity and changes in clinical practice, including an increase in the average age of mothers at childbirth and a rising proportion of births by caesarean section, which present an ongoing challenge. We are supporting the system with clinical guidance, workforce investment, and estate funding through:

• the Maternal Care Bundle, which provides clear, standardised pathways, risk assessment processes, and multidisciplinary approaches to care;

• 14 maternal medicine networks across England, for access to specialist care for chronic and acute medical problems around pregnancy;

• investing £10.6 million to boost maternity care by funding an additional 1,000 temporary roles to support newly qualified midwives to join the National Health Service. There are a record number of midwives working in the NHS this year, with over 600 more than a year ago;

• development of a sustainable training route for obstetric physicians and targeted investment of £750,000 for obstetric physician capacity;

• working with partners to develop homebirth standards and a homebirth framework; and

• investing an additional £41 million of safety funding to improve maternity and neonatal estates, supporting safer care and better outcomes for mothers and their newborns.

We recognise that caesarean birth is major abdominal surgery, and that recovery can place additional physical and emotional demands on women and their families in the early weeks and months after birth. All women who have given birth should be offered a six-to-eight-week postnatal consultation with a general practitioner covering both physical and mental health.