Home birth restrictions
Home birth services are being restricted, suspended and frequently interrupted up and down the UK.
But it shouldn’t be this way.
Home birth should be widely available and accessible across the UK alongside other core birth settings. Download our full report – exploring these restrictions, and how they disproportionately impact minoritised or marginalised communities and our recommendations on what must be done below.
Our report reveals that two thirds (66%) of the 119 Trusts for which we have information (either through an FOI response or intelligence from elsewhere) have either had service suspensions, strict restrictions, or frequent interruptions in the 12 months between October 2023 and November 2024.
Our report also shows:
- Widespread unreliability and patchy provision of home birth services, with blanket policies on who is able to access home birth services, means that home birth is not a meaningful option for many women and birthing people in the UK
- Restrictions, suspensions and frequent interruptions of home birth provision in the UK is causing trauma for individuals and a wider distrust in the system across communities
- Women and birthing people from marginalised communities are disproportionately impacted by suspensions, restrictions and restrictive policies to home birth services
- There is a widespread lack of adequate planning and training for staff to enable home births to be supported
A national failure to provide widely available and accessible home birth services demonstrates a disregard for our right to make decisions about our bodies and our care. A maternity system that protects the rights of women and birthing people during pregnancy and birth is essential to reducing trauma, providing safe care, improving outcomes for all and addressing racial disparities.
This is why all Trusts must have a functioning, safe homebirth service, which is widely available and accessible as a core part of maternity provision alongside midwifery- and obstetric-led units and urgent action must be taken nationally to stop and reverse the dismantling of community infrastructure.
We continue to call on the Government to introduce new legislation – a new SAFE Maternity Care Act – that enshrines in law that all Trusts must have a functioning, safe homebirth service, which is widely available and accessible.
Safety in maternity care: why no one feels safe
While a welcome boost in committed spend on health has been outlined in the Department of Health and Social Care’s spending review update in June 2025, the government needs to urgently look at closures and suspensions of core maternity services and the exodus of midwives.
We recently shared a survey to trained, practicing and student midwives to better understand the challenges they face in the profession. We collected responses through this survey from mid-March 2025 to June 2025.
The answers from our survey’s 101 respondents highlight a broken maternity system where:
🔸 Student midwives qualify with no clear way into jobs
🔸 Midwives face burnout, bullying, and other barriers impacting their path to progression
🔸 Training is lacking, especially on complex situations, bereavement care, or physiological birth. Many qualify without ever attending a home birth.
🔸 Because of this, midwives are leaving the profession and feel unsupported.
The result is that no one feels safe in a system that prioritises its own safety and survival over women and birthing people and midwives.
🗣️ Have you experienced this crisis firsthand? We want to hear from you. Please get in touch via [email protected] to share your experience. Your responses will help inform our future advocacy work and push for the change our maternity care systems urgently need, and will not be shared without your consent.
Watch our ‘Access Denied – The Reality of Home Birth’ Webinar
Thank you so much to everyone who attended our Webinar: Access Denied – The Reality of Home Birth Restrictions in the UK. There were some incredibly fruitful discussions and invaluable insight. Special shoutout to our super panel Natasha Allen, Naomi Davina Pemberton, Camella Main, our co-ceo Janaki Mahadevan and our fabulous chair Dr Ria Clarke.
Our campaign in the news
Your body. Your birth. Your rights.
Resources
We’ve developed some resources for women and birthing people who are impacted by home birth restrictions, including an email template for you to challenge any restrictions in place. If you are a community group member/wider advocate who wants to challenge a specific hospital’s/Trust’s policy on home birth restrictions/suspensions, you can also use our template to do so. Click the button on the left below to access it.
If you are a doula, midwife, birth worker or healthcare professional working in maternity care, we need your help to understand the state of home birth services. You can email us at: [email protected] to let us know what home birth services are like in the trust(s) where you work.
We have also developed some important information for healthcare professionals who are working to support women and birthing people with rights-respecting care that upholds human rights law. You can access these resources via the button below on the right, and if you’d like to receive campaign updates you can sign up to our newsletter here.