Skip to main content

Publication, Part of

Maternity Services Monthly Statistics, Final April 2025, Provisional May 2025, official statistics

Official statistics

Publication Date:
24 Jul 2025
Geographic Coverage:
England
Geographical Granularity:
Country, Regions, Hospital Trusts, Provider, NHS Trusts, Integrated Care Boards, Sub-Integrated Care Boards, Local Authorities, Hospital and Community Health Services, Hospital Sites
Date Range:
01 Apr 2025 to 31 May 2025

Current Chapter

Maternity Services Monthly Statistics, Final April 2025, Provisional May 2025, official statistics

View all

Next Chapter

Antenatal booking appointments
Page contents

Summary

This statistical release makes available the most recent monthly data on NHS-funded maternity services in England, using data submitted to the Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS).

This is the latest report from the newest version of the data set, MSDS.v.2, which has been in place since April 2019. The new data set was a significant change which added support for key policy initiatives such as continuity of carer, as well as increased flexibility through the introduction of new clinical coding. This was a major change, so data quality and coverage initially reduced from the levels seen in earlier publications. MSDS.v.2 data completeness improved over time, and we are looking at ways of supporting further improvements.

This publication also includes the National Maternity Dashboard, which can be accessed via the link below.

Data derived from SNOMED codes is used in some measures such as those for birthweight, and others will follow in later publications. SNOMED data is also included in some of the published Clinical Quality Improvement Metrics (CQIMs), where rules have been applied to ensure measure rates are calculated only where data quality is high enough. System suppliers are at different stages of development and delivery to trusts. In some cases, this has limited the aspects of data that can be submitted in the MSDS.

To help Trusts understand to what extent they meet the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts (CNST) Maternity Incentive Scheme (MIS) Data Quality Criteria for Safety Action 2 we produce a CNST Scorecard Dashboard showing trust performance against this criteria. Following the publication of the criteria for Year 7 for the Maternity Incentive Scheme in April, this MSDS release includes the fourth publication of the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts: Scorecard showing trust performance against the new criteria. The assessment month for Safety Action 2 will be final July 2025 data.

This dashboard does include data for a few non-CNST MSDS data quality priorities, which are not assessed as part of the CNST Maternity Incentive Scheme.

The percentages presented in this report are based on rounded figures and therefore may not total to 100%.

Highlights

Official Statistics

These statistics are now classified as official. More information about official statistics can be found on the UK Statistics Authority website. More information about this change can be found in the Data Quality Statement.

Where this publication contains new or existing statistics undergoing development and improvement work, they will individually be labelled as "Official Statistics in development" in the accompanying Metadata.

Publication data files and suppression methodology

This publication contains three separate CSV files for the reporting months: one set for the final (April 2025) data and one set for the provisional (May 2025) data.

The contents of the three files are as follows:

• CSV Data: Aggregate figures based on the MSDS, for a standard set of metrics including the total numbers of booking appointments, deliveries, and babies born within the reporting month. Breakdowns are provided at several organisational and regional levels including National, Local Maternity and Neonatal System (LMNS), and Provider (trust).
• Data Quality:  Counts broken down by provider, showing the VODIM (Valid, Default, Invalid, or Missing) status of the records submitted for each data field within the MSDS. This file contains information about data quality only and should not be used to assess activity and outcomes. It reports on all the data provided at submission and will include information about records that are not included in the final analysis contained within the other two CSV files.
• Measures:  Aggregate figures based on the MSDS, for several specific sets of metrics including but not limited to those for Clinical Quality Improvement Metrics (CQIM), Continuity of Carer (CofC), mother's body mass index (BMI), and the Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle v3 (SBLCBv3). Breakdowns are provided at several organisational and regional levels including National, Local Maternity and Neonatal System (LMNS), and Provider (trust). This file only contains CQIMBreastfeeding6to8Weeks figures for final data, not provisional data, as this metric requires Community Services Dataset (CSDS) records which are not available within the required timeframe.

This publication is accompanied by a Metadata file located on the MSDS guidance hub which contains more granular detail about the contents of the above files, including information about the definitions and logic used in their construction.

In accordance with the suppression methodology guidance for this dataset, rounding has been applied to all figures as follows: counts of zero are shown as zero, counts of 1-7 are rounded to 5, and all other counts are rounded to the nearest 5, with rates (where relevant) calculated from the rounded numerator and denominator numbers. There are four exceptions to this, for rare events, where rates are calculated from unrounded numbers but are not shown where the numerator is less than 8. This applies to CQIMTears, CQIMPPH, CQIMPreterm, and CQIMApgar.

Additional information about the Final April 2025, Provisional May 2025 publication

The design of the National Maternity Dashboard has been updated. This is a presentational change only, with no changes to the measures included or how they are calculated.

For the provisional May 2025 data, the MBRRACE groupings have been updated for a number of trusts to match the latest available MBRRACE data. This means that values at MBRRACE Grouping level in the May csv files are not comparable to those for earlier months.

The following breakdowns are not available in this publication due to processing issues:

  • GenitalTractTraumaticLesion and GenitalTractTraumaticLesionGroup counts in the csv data file
  • MBRRACE group data in the National Maternity Services Dashboard for 2 of the CQIMs:
    • Babies readmitted to hospital who were under 30 days old
    • Babies that were fully or partially breastfed at 6 to 8 weeks old

We are working to include these breakdowns in future monthly publications.

Key Facts

119 successful submissions

For April 2025 data, 119 providers successfully submitted data with 119 submitting data on births.

3 providers submitted data that should be used with caution. See the Data quality statement for more detail.

53,905 bookings in April 2025

53,905 women with an antenatal booking appointment were reported in the period, of which 65% were within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.

Of the trusts that submitted booking data, there were 35,120 bookings in which the babies' gestational age was in the 0-70 days range.

43,875 births reported

We received data relating to 43,235 deliveries of 43,875 babies.

MSDS figures relate only to births occurring under the care of NHS Maternity Services. The Office for National Statistics publish information on all registered births.

44% of deliveries were spontaneous

44% of deliveries were spontaneous vaginal births, 10% had instrumental assistance, 20% were elective caesarean sections and 25% were emergency caesarean sections.

Administrative Sources

Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS): this is a patient-level data set that captures information about activity carried out by Maternity Services relating to a mother and baby(s), from the point of the first booking appointment until mother and baby(s) are discharged from maternity services. This is a secondary uses data set, which re-uses clinical and operational data for purposes other than direct patient care.

Last edited: 25 July 2025 3:26 pm