Women turned away in labour as Coventry's Lucina Centre 'effectively closed' over winter

Available for over a year

Research by BBC CWR's found that since the pandemic the midwife led centres in Coventry and Warwick have been regularly closed because of a lack of staff. A Freedom of Information Request has found in 2019 around 7% of women giving birth at University Hospital did so at the Lucina Centre. That fell to 0.2% in 2021. In November 2021 there were no births in the unit at all. Warwick's speciaist Bluebell Centre has seen a fall in use too, but not by as much, but it still closed it's doors 31 times in 2021. That's up from 2 closures in 2019, before the pandemic.