Health chiefs ordered to rethink “shameful” plan to shut Pontefract birthing unit

Councillors were heavily critical of the decision to permanently shut the unit and have called for further public consultation to be carried out.

Local NHS decision makers were accused of ‘deliberately running down’ the town’s maternity services in order to justify its closure.

On Tuesday (January 9), Wakefield District Health and Care Partnership (WDHCP) agreed to the permanent closure of Friarwood Birth Centre.

The centre was temporarily shut in 2019 “on the grounds of clinical safety” due to a midwife shortage.

The NHS also said the number of births at Pontefract was lower than expected”so it could not justify midwives being deployed there.

Before the suspension, around 200 women a year gave birth at Pontefract.

Maternity provision will continue to be prioritised at Pinderfields Hospital, with full ante-natal and post-natal care services remaining at Pontefract.

Key decision makers faced a backlash when they attended a meeting of Wakefield Council’s NHS scrutiny committee to discuss the closure.

The committee voted in favour of referring the decision back to WDHCP and called for fresh public consultation.

Councillor Olivia Rowley said: “You seem to be arguing that there were not enough people who want to use the service.

“But people didn’t want to use the service because they were not assured that there was going to be anybody there to look after them.

“There has been a deliberate effort to run down this service to ensure that it closes.

“It seems people are being left with an absolute Hobson’s choice.”

Scrutiny committee chair Elizabeth Rhodes said: “A decision on closure has been made on previous engagement from 2018 and 2019.

“You collectively believed that it could go ahead on an engagement plan that was five years old.

“We want to make sure practices and processes are adhered to in terms of how this came about without consultation.

“It’s against all the principles we have with regards to scrutiny. This is a significant change.

“The principle of public consultation should be sacrosanct when we are talking about the closure of this service.

“I will not be part of a precedent for a lack of scrutiny on closures that have not been consulted on.

“People in the east of the district need our support.”

Coun Charlie Keith: “We knew what the realistic outcome for Pontefract was. We could read the writing on the wall.

“At the end of the day it’s going to be centralised at Pinderfields.

“We want reassurance that there is not going to be a repeat of this absolute mess.”

“We want some reassurance, on behalf of the public who elect us, that you have the capacity to provide a 2024 service for the people who are going to use it.”

Andy Wood, the council’s scrutiny officer, said: “The fear of the public is that, once this decision is taken, there will be no possibility of returning to a maternity unit at Pontefract.”

Ruth Unwin, director at strategy at WDHCP, said there had been extensive public engagement to try to establish why the number of births at Pontefract was lower than expected.

She said: “That work has continued in terms of trying to get people to use Pontefract for many years.”

Ms Unwin said it had been expected that there would have been a minimum of 500 births a year at the unit.

She continued: “We had a full-time midwife and healthcare assistant sitting on the unit sometimes not delivering babies for more than two days.

“So, 60 percent of the time, the unit was not being fully utilised. So we had to do something. We had a responsibility to do that.

“That was why we went out and did the engagement that we did.”

Nursing director Penny Woodhead said: “The numbers of births at Pontefract were well, well below what was originally anticipated in planning terms.”

Ms Woodhead said the decision was partly down to a recent national drive to improve safety in maternity services, adding: “We are putting more and more scrutiny, and rightly so, on the safety aspect for women and their babies.”

Anne-Marie Henshaw, director of midwifery at Mid Yorkshire Hospitals Trust, said: “The original service suspension was due to midwife vacancies. This continues to be a national issue.

“Up until October or November this year we had around 40 full-time vacancies against our planned workforce model.

“We have done really, really well in terms of recruitment.

“Our current position is very healthy

“But we still need to note the regional and national backdrop of midwife vacancies.”

WDHCP has been asked to respond to the scrutiny committee’s request within seven days.

Yvette Cooper, MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, has also demanded that the centre remain open, saying parents have been ‘let down’.

Ms Cooper, who gave birth to her three children at Pontefract, said: “This is a deeply damaging decision and I urge the local NHS to think again.

“Local parents are losing out because of the shameful running down of the NHS and maternity services by the Conservative government and the total failure to train and recruit midwives.

“But the local NHS bosses should not be giving in to national pressure.

“They should be working with local organisations to tackle the problem and increase midwife recruitment rather than pushing this permanent closure through without even any local consultation.

“When the midwife-led unit was first closed nearly five years ago due to shortage of midwives they told us it was temporary and would re-open the following year.

“Instead, those promises have been broken.

“Local NHS bosses must not use excuses to bypass local consultation or to push through a permanent decision like this.”

Ms Cooper said she was calling for the decision to be re-opened.

She added: “Having had my three children in Pontefract Hospital, I know how important local choice is for mums.

“Parents in our area are being badly let down.”