Following the news today that one in ten maternity units had to ‘shut their doors’ more than 10 times during 2007 Eileen Nolan, the Associate Director for Maternity Services at Ashford and St. Peter’s comments:

“As a practicing midwife I know that we have an impressive record of keeping our unit open.  On only one occaision in 2007 did we have to refer four women to other maternity units.   On that one day – the 26th March 2007 – we were very busy and were dealing with shortage of staff.

“Our maternity unit handles over 4,000 births every year, with many high risk births due to our co-location with Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for Surrey.   We have a robust escalation plan which is used when the unit is either very busy or short staffed.  The aim of the escalation policy is to prevent situations when the unit may need to ‘restrict access’.   The maternity service as a whole does not close to admissions.”