21/03/2026
20 March 2026
SAD DAY FOR MOTHERS
Save our NHS Leicestershire deplores the decision of the Integrated Care Board (ICB) to close St Mary's NHS midwife led birth centre in Melton Mowbray
For many years, mothers have benefited from the highly personalised care and excellent inpatient postnatal support. Indeed, the Care Quality Commission singled out the postnatal beds as offering especially valued support and care for mothers with complex problems.
Godfrey Jennings, Secretary of Save Our NHS Leicestershire, informed the ICB Board meeting yesterday.
“We are aware that research has shown that mothers with low-risk pregnancies tend to have better outcomes in stand-alone midwife led units than in other types of birth unit in terms of fewer interventions. The option of this high-quality care is now to be lost to the approximately 2,400 women in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland who have low risk pregnancies every year.”
None of the arguments put by campaigners, councillors and mothers had any effect on the Board which was clearly determined to close the unit. One non-executive director asked some pointed questions, but the decision it seemed had already been made. Although NHS leads have closed St Mary's partly on the grounds of low usage levels, we have been told that University Hospitals of Leicester counted only numbers of births at St Mary's and did not and do not collate the numbers of mothers benefitting from the inpatient postnatal care. We see this neglect to measure accurately the use of St Mary's as evidence of a marginalisation of the unit in the minds of senior managers.
In 2021, local NHS leaders promised that St Mary's would be replaced by a stand-alone midwife led birth centre in a more highly populated area on the site of the Leicester General Hospital, trialled for at least three years. We see the decision to close St Mary's without replacement as a breach of promise.
