Birth is all over the news day in and day out - dangers inside the NHS / dangers outside the NHS - but how can we find balance?

FOI minutes show startling safety concerns in Gloucestershire’s hospital-based maternity care, yet the response has been to suspend homebirth and restrict Birth Centres.

This article unpacks what the system’s own documents actually say — and why transparency matters now.

Women are accused of making bad decisions, but this mother spent her pregnancy researching doing everything she could to get the safest care possible - find out how she did it.

Two formal complaints have now been submitted: one to Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust regarding the suspension of the home birth service, and another to the Health Overview & Scrutiny Committee for failing in its duty to properly examine the lawfulness of the Trust’s decision. These bodies have serious responsibilities to the public, and when those responsibilities are not met, women are left without safe, lawful access to the care they are entitled to.

G-MAG: Gloucestershire Maternity Actions Group launches in response to the suspension of homebirth services and the dismantling of midwife-led care.

Advocating for lawful, ethical maternity services and women’s human rights across Gloucestershire.

Gloucestershire’s maternity decisions are now being driven by untested assumptions about “risk” — not evidence, not law, and not women’s lived realities.

At the October HOSC meeting, no data was presented, no risk assessments were shared, and no scrutiny took place. Yet midwife-led care was treated as “unsafe,” while the obstetric unit — responsible for nearly £20 million in birth-injury payouts since 2020 — remains unquestioned.

There are two routes women can take: a formal complaint to the Ombudsman, or a simple civil claim to recover the costs you were forced to take on. I’ve created a full Civil Claim Bundle with the key laws and templates to help you do this. You can contact me if you need support.

Birth should never be driven by ideology.
The Guardian’s investigation into extreme freebirth circles is devastating – and it should be. But movements like that don’t appear in a vacuum. They grow because women everywhere are being failed by increasingly medicalised systems that silence physiology and override choice.

Wendy Savage was one of the few obstetricians in the 1980s brave enough to challenge the growing medicalisation of birth. She supported VBAC, home birth and women’s autonomy at a time when these ideas were considered dangerous. Her refusal to back down led to a highly publicised inquiry — the Savage Report — which cleared her entirely and exposed an ideology clash at the heart of maternity care. Wendy’s courage helped shift birth culture in the UK, opening the door for informed consent, physiological birth, and women’s decision-making. Her story is a reminder that rights are easily lost if we stop defending them.

The drastic changes in the maternity culture in Gloucestershire over recent years can in part be explained by a change in leadership. A man who was found in a tribunal to have ‘humiliated’ staff and caused constructive dismissal.

How is it possible to go from such a shocking failure - to another high level £300k+ per year role????

It has recently come to light that a n umber os staff nurses were axed in July ‘25 being told that there were enough midwives at the unit already.

If this was the case, then why are midwives now being pulled from the birth centre?

The first hint that something was wrong didn’t come from the Trust or the ICB — it came from a doula supporting a woman very close to going into labour. She suddenly found out she could no longer birth at home. With no time to prepare or consider alternatives, she felt she had no choice but to go into hospital.

That was the moment many of us realised something serious was happening behind the scenes.

We immediately began checking on other women booked for home birth, making sure they were aware and able to explore their options. I put together template letters families could use, and we quickly formed an advocacy group to support one another through the uncertainty.

Throughout this, I continued trying to open constructive communication with Gloucestershire Hospitals Trust and the Integrated Care Board — requesting information, asking for clarity, and reminding them of their legal duties around public involvement. But responses were slow, sporadic, or nonexistent, even as more women came forward with worrying accounts of mixed messages and last-minute cancellations.

I’ve submitted a set of Freedom of Information requests today (17 November 2025) to get clarity on what’s really happening inside Gloucestershire’s midwife-led services. Women deserve transparency, not rumours and silence. The Trust now has 20 working days — until 15 December 2025 — to respond.

One request asks for a full breakdown of how often the Gloucester Birth Unit has been closed, restricted, or running at reduced capacity this year. Another examines how many times midwives have been pulled away from midwife-led care and how many women have been redirected as a result. And a separate request demands the paperwork behind the decision to convert two clinical rooms in the Birth Unit into office space — including whether this was justified on the basis of a supposed “drop in births.”

These answers matter. They reveal the real state of the service, the real impact on women, and the real decision-making happening behind closed doors. If the system is safe, the data will show it. If not, the public has a right to know.

When a Norfolk woman’s home-birth service was suspended, she refused to give up. With AIMS and Birthrights’ support, she challenged her NHS Trust — and won. The Ombudsman ruled the Trust’s refusal to fund independent midwifery care amounted to maladministration, setting a vital precedent for maternity rights today.

An overview of the freedom of information requests already made. Will they reveal why the Trust is failing in it’s duty to provide safe and equitable maternity care when the answers have been laid out?

Following the ongoing suspension of Gloucestershire’s home birth service, women are left without real choice or continuity of care.
This post brings together template letters for writing to the NHS Trust, ICB, MPs, local media, and even family and friends — calling for safe, skilled, woman-centred midwifery care to be reinstated.
It also includes my correspondence with the Director of Midwifery, her unsatisfactory response, and why I’ve now escalated these questions through Freedom of Information requests to demand transparency and accountability.