The Maternity and Neonatal Investigation, led by Baroness Amos, was tasked with providing the 2025 Health Secretary Wes Streeting with recommendations to address unacceptable standards of care experienced by some mothers in childbirth in NHS hospitals.
Baroness Amos visited Banbury in Novembver 2024 to talk to mothers who had suffered birth trauma at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford (JR).
To address the experience of the Banbury area – which accesses obstetric care at the JR – we illustrated in a written submission to the investigation, how the centralisation of main maternity care here, and in many parts of the country, has caused overcrowding of city units, lowered standards, caused recruitment and retention problems and is implicated in appalling levels of birth trauma suffered by numerous women and babies.
KTHG maintains the JR’s very large unit has forced the Trust into management of too many births compromising safety, failing systemically and proving an unsustainable model of care. The patient voice has been lost and the system lacks future-proofing.
KTHG submitted a 40-page report to Baroness Amos. Our submission document included research done by KTHG into the continuation of obstetric care at a number of small hospitals around the country. We believe loss of such units (and the Horton’s obstetric unit) are a factor that is highly relevant to the poor care nationwide, including Oxfordshire.
Among counties of comparable population (760,000+), Oxfordshire is the only county that only has one obstetric unit. A stakeholders’ event in 2017 agreed by vote that the best solution for the county was to have two obstetric units. This was not accepted by the OUH – but KTHG is campaigning for that solution to be adopted.
We maintain that elsewhere in the country, large hospital maternity functions, supported by a small district obstetric unit, have not suffered the pressures associated with centralisation and we urged the investigation team to consider a reversal of the downgrading of these district units.
You can download the full submission by clicking the link below.
Read KTHG's Submission to Baroness Amos's Investigation