There are far too few critical care places for desperately sick new-born babies, according to a census published on Friday.

The result is that mothers and their new babies are often transported long distances away from home to a hospital where an incubator is available.

An expert in new-born, or neonatal medicine, has warned that while doctors there may be highly-skilled, they have neither foreknowledge of the case or an established relationship with the mother.

The government is putting extra investment into neonatal intensive care - �15m both this year and next into baby and child critical care.

But this is not enough, claim the census' authors, whose work is published in the British Medical Journal.

Lack of cots

They looked at the 37 largest centres dealing with high-risk deliveries and dangerously sick new-borns.

Each had between five and 16 fully-staffed neonatal intensive care cots.

During just one three-month period, there were 309 transfers to other units, usually because of a lack of available cots.

And anecdotal evidence taken by the team suggested that the problem was growing rather than getting better, despite the extra money.

One of the authors, Dr Janet Rennie, from Kings College Hospital in London, told BBC News Online: "These results - if extrapolated for all the health regions, suggest a growing problem.

"Large numbers of women and their babies are being moved, often large distances. These transfers were identified as an undesirable aspect of care by a report a few years ago.

Away from families

"These women are being moved away from their family and support structures, and from consultants they know and who understand their cases."

Dr Harvey Marcovitch, consultant paediatrician and spokesman for the Royal College of Paediatrics, said: "One of the terrors that local hospital paediatricians like me have is that we will need to transfer a seriously ill baby or mother to one of these specialist centres and they won't be able to take them.

"These are supposed to be the top class centres but this report shows they are working at top stretch and in some cases are in a very critical state indeed.

"There is no evidence that lives are being put at risk, but that is because of the extraordinary effort put in by staff working in these units."

He told of one horror story in which a woman from Banbury, in Oxfordshire, had to be transferred first to Swindon, 55 miles away, then to Northampton, 40 miles away.

Finally, once the baby was born, it had to be taken to Birmingham - the nearest location of an intensive care cot.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "We are aware of the pressure on NHS neonatal intensive care services.

"That is why for the first time ever we have announced ring-fenced funding - �5m each year - specifically for the modernisation of NHS neonatal intensive care services.

"We are working with the British Association of Perinatal Medicine and the Neonatal Nurses Association to formulate plans for the modernisation of neonatal intensive care services in the NHS to ensure that the most vulnerable babies receive prompt access to high quality care wherever and whenever they need it."