Questions over Stafford Hospital maternity unit

The maternity unit at the Weston Road site is set to be downsized to a midwife-led centre that will only be able to deal with half the number of births that it currently manages.

Prime Minister David Cameron said he wants to see a fully functioning maternity unit in the county town and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has ordered NHS England to look into whether it is possible to have one put in place in the future.

But one of the county's top health chiefs has admitted that essential services needed to run such a unit are the same ones being taken away as part of the dissolution of Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust approved by Mr Hunt this week.

Andrew Donald, lead officer at the Stafford and Cannock Clinical Commissioning Groups, said: "We will work with NHS England to see if anything different comes out to see if it changes the current situation that providing an obstetric-led maternity unit does not meet the two tests that it is not clinically sustainable in the long term or affordable.

"If we want to have a consultant-led maternity unit then we need to have things like paediatrics, special care baby unit, critical care and support services and all that increases the costs and that brings us back to square one."

Services such as paediatrics, including the special care baby unit, intensive and critical care will be stopped at Stafford once the controversial restructure is complete.

All these services are needed to provide consultant-led maternity unit, according to a report by administrators appointed to overhaul the trust.