The Department and NHS England fully support women to make informed choices about their care, including the choice to give birth at home. We expect local services to work collaboratively to ensure the provision of safe, personalised care in all settings.

The Core Competency Framework, which sets out the essential training for staff to address variations in the quality of support provided, outlines that training should be tailored to specific staff groups, for example, home birth, or birth centre teams. Staff should also receive training in the management of emergencies, using clinical simulation at the point of care and across a range of settings, including in the community.

Integrated care boards are responsible for commissioning maternity services and for determining how those services are configured to meet local needs. There may be occasions when home birth services need to be temporarily suspended or interrupted for safety reasons. When this occurs, trusts are required to re-open services as soon as it is safe to do so and report it nationally through the Maternity and Neonatal SitRep reporting tool, which collects essential data to monitor the performance of maternity and neonatal services.

NHS England will be writing to all services and systems asking them to review their service provision.

The Department and NHS England fully support women to make informed choices about their care, including the choice to give birth at home. We expect local services to work collaboratively to ensure the provision of safe, personalised care in all settings.

The Core Competency Framework, which sets out the essential training for staff to address variations in the quality of support provided, outlines that training should be tailored to specific staff groups, for example, home birth, or birth centre teams. Staff should also receive training in the management of emergencies, using clinical simulation at the point of care and across a range of settings, including in the community.

Integrated care boards are responsible for commissioning maternity services and for determining how those services are configured to meet local needs. There may be occasions when home birth services need to be temporarily suspended or interrupted for safety reasons. When this occurs, trusts are required to re-open services as soon as it is safe to do so and report it nationally through the Maternity and Neonatal SitRep reporting tool, which collects essential data to monitor the performance of maternity and neonatal services.

NHS England will be writing to all services and systems asking them to review their service provision.

The Department and NHS England fully support women to make informed choices about their care, including the choice to give birth at home. We expect local services to work collaboratively to ensure the provision of safe, personalised care in all settings.

The Core Competency Framework, which sets out the essential training for staff to address variations in the quality of support provided, outlines that training should be tailored to specific staff groups, for example, home birth, or birth centre teams. Staff should also receive training in the management of emergencies, using clinical simulation at the point of care and across a range of settings, including in the community.

Integrated care boards are responsible for commissioning maternity services and for determining how those services are configured to meet local needs. There may be occasions when home birth services need to be temporarily suspended or interrupted for safety reasons. When this occurs, trusts are required to re-open services as soon as it is safe to do so and report it nationally through the Maternity and Neonatal SitRep reporting tool, which collects essential data to monitor the performance of maternity and neonatal services.

NHS England will be writing to all services and systems asking them to review their service provision.

The NHS Long Term Plan and the accompanying guidance, Universal Personalised Care, made commitments to deliver choice and personalised care in maternity services. The NHS Long Term Plan and the Universal Personalised Care guidance are available, respectively, at the following two links:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-term-plan/

https://www.england.nhs.uk/personalisedcare/comprehensive-model/

The Maternity Programme supports local maternity systems to improve choice and deliver personalised care for women and their families.

NHS England has published guidance which sets out the four birthing choices: home birth; birth in a unit run by midwives; hospital birth; and unassisted birth. This guidance is available at the following link:

https://www.nhs.uk/pregnancy/labour-and-birth/preparing-for-the-birth/where-to-give-birth-the-options/

The provision of arrangements for home birth and information on how this is provided is the responsibility of local National Health Service trusts, who are directed as appropriate by their integrated care board.

The Government is aware of the temporary changes to services at Yeovil District Hospital that have been made in response to a number of factors, including a recent Care Quality Commission inspection and not being able to currently meet the staffing levels required to provide safe services for babies and families.

The temporary closure is for an initial period of six months. Home births will continue to be offered, based on discussions with parents-to-be about preferences and risks. All births and expectant mothers are also being offered pain relief and safe birthing at surrounding hospitals in Taunton, Dorchester, and Bath.

Choice is a core part of maternity care. We are working with NHS England to improve personalised care, and the quality of information mothers receive about their choices, so they feel empowered throughout their pregnancy journey into motherhood.

While all trusts providing maternity services in England offer a home birth service, there is occasionally a need for a trust to suspend home births for operational reasons, such as temporary staff shortages.

In March 2022, NHS England announced that more than £50 million would be provided over the next two years to increase the number of staff in maternity and neonatal services. This is in addition to a further £95 million per year for recruitment and training.

We have not made an assessment.

The Department does not currently hold this data.

The data requested are not held centrally.

I have been asked to reply on behalf of the Cabinet Office.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.

Letter from Glen Watson, dated June 2013:

As Director General for the Office for National Statistics, I have been asked to reply to your recent question to the Secretary of State for Health asking how many homebirths there were in each local health authority area in England in each of the last five years; and in each case what proportion this formed of the total number of births for that authority area. [157846]

The latest year for which figures are available is 2011. The tables show the number and percentage of women giving birth at home in each local authority and in each strategic health authority in England for 2007 to 2011. Figures can only be provided by local authority and strategic health authority for England due to disproportionate costs of producing for other health geographies.

A copy of the tables has been placed in the Library of the House.