In the past four years, maternity wards across England have closed their doors more than 2,200 times. That is not a typo. According to House of Commons Library date, between May 2020 and April 2024, 2,201 closures were reported by NHS trusts—848 in the last year alone.
We are not talking about cancelled appointments or minor delays. These were full or partial closures of maternity services, often leaving expectant mothers with no option but to travel elsewhere or wait and hope that the service would reopen before they went into labour. For those of us representing rural areas, like my own constituency of Yeovil, that often means journeys of over an hour during one of the most vulnerable times in a woman’s life.
This is not a one-off. It is not a localised issue. It is an escalating emergency happening in plain sight.
Maternity care should be one of the most basic and reliable services in our health system. It is the point at which life begins, and the standard of care received has lifelong implications for both mother and baby. Yet far too often, families are being let down, staff are stretched to breaking point, and politicians are looking the other way.
When Yeovil’s own maternity unit was closed a few weeks ago following a warning from the Care Quality Commission, I was inundated with messages from worried families and exhausted staff. They were not angry at the individuals working on the ward—far from it. They were furious that the system had allowed things to get to that point. They were devastated by the lack of warning, the lack of accountability, and the total absence of any clear plan to restore local services.
What is most concerning is that we do not even know how many of these 2,201 closures led to full permanent loss of local maternity services. There is no central public record of what happens after a closure, or whether recovery plans are in place. There is no consistent requirement to communicate these decisions clearly to the public. That is a failure of basic transparency.
We are told by ministers that closures are sometimes necessary for safety reasons. And that is true. But if safety concerns are now leading to hundreds of closures each year, then the only logical conclusion is that the maternity system itself is unsafe. That should concern every single one of us.
The reasons for these closures are no mystery. Staff shortages, lack of investment, outdated facilities, and poor leadership in some trusts are all well-documented. The Care Quality Commission has repeatedly raised the alarm. Reviews and reports have come and gone, but meaningful change has been slow and piecemeal.
In the Spring Budget of 2024, the former government announced £35 million for maternity safety improvements. While welcome, that is nowhere near enough. That money has to be split across the entire country, with some of it earmarked for training and some for specific programmes. When you divide it between all the services in need, it does not go far.
We need a step change in how we approach maternity care. The NHS is full of dedicated professionals doing their absolute best, but they are being let down by a lack of national leadership and planning. It is not right that decisions to suspend or shut services are happening behind closed doors, with no clear route back for communities who lose them.
I believe the government must do three things urgently.
First, publish full and transparent data on maternity unit closures, including which services have reopened, which have not, and what support is being given to each trust. The public deserve the facts.
Second, establish a dedicated national fund to support maternity recovery in areas most at risk of permanent loss. This should include both emergency support and long-term planning for areas that are especially rural or facing particular inequalities.
And third, work with NHS England to create a national standard for how local people are informed about changes to maternity provision. Trust must be rebuilt, and that starts with honesty.
Bringing a child into the world should be safe, supported, and local. At the moment, it is too often unpredictable, under-resourced, and fragile.
Two thousand closures is a flashing red warning light. If we do not act now, we will look back and ask how we allowed things to get this bad—and why we stayed silent when we knew the scale of the problem.
Maternity wards have closed over 2,200 times in four years. Why are we not acting like this is a national emergency?
