The maternity unit at the Whittington Hospital is to be upgraded. This follows a decision by the North Central London Integrated Care Board (NCL ICB) on 25 March to accept the recommendations of the Start Well project and focus on providing maternity care at four units:  University College London Hospital (UCLH), Barnet Hospital, North Middlesex University Hospital and Whittington Hospital. This will mean the eventual closure of the maternity unit at the Royal Free Hospital.

The ICB says the decision was necessary to provide the best level of maternity care in the area and is a result of declining birth rates. It says this means that the Royal Free does not get enough difficult births to allow its staff to maintain their licences for critical care. The Royal Free can currently offer Level 1 care for unwell babies – that is babies born after 34 weeks who do not need intensive or a high level of medical care. The Whittington can offer the higher Level 2 of care for babies born after 27 weeks and those who need shorts periods of intensive care. The ICB says this means it will be easier to upgrade the Whittington.

The ICB says it will invest £67m in capital investment to upgrade the Whittington, Barnet and UCLH maternity sites. Some staff from the Royal Free unit will be deployed to the other hospitals. You can learn more about the decision process and how the ICB intends to mitigate the change for users of the Royal Free here.

Islington Keep Our NHS Public (IKONP) welcomes the planned upgrade to the Whittington maternity unit. Maternity care is crying out for more investment to retain midwives and upgrade equipment. But as we said in our reply to the consultation, we should not have been forced to choose between Whittington Hospital and The Royal Free. The Royal College of Midwives said both should stay open.

The unit at the Royal Free will not close immediately but will be wound down over several years. This raises the question of whether people will stop attending before the unit closes. IKONP will continue to campaign for better maternity care and support campaigners for the Royal Free.