THE boss of the NHS trust at the centre of the maternity crisis in North Devon has been called to a crunch scrutiny meeting amid the confirmation that services will be suspended.

Sam Higginson, who runs the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, which encompasses North Devon and the Exeter area, has been called to a meeting by a committee that oversees changes in health policies.

An emergency session of the health and adult care scrutiny committee has been called at Devon County Council to try and unpick how North Devon’s maternity services have found themselves at risk of temporary closure.

That could mean journeys of around 90 minutes to either Exeter’s Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital or Taunton Hospital.

The trust has now confirmed it will be temporarily suspending births at North Devon District Hospital from Tuesday, August 11 due to “unsafe levels of medical staffing”.

However, it stressed that while births and face-to-face triage would not be available during the suspension, other services such as community midwifery, scans, birth planning, ultrasound clinics and antenatal outpatient clinics will remain.

It said “every available option has been explored” without success to enable birthing services to continue, meaning it could not secure additional locum cover or mutual aid support from partner organisations. That meant a temporary suspension was “the only safe course of action”.

Carolyn Mills, Royal Devon chief nursing officer, said it had been an “exceptionally difficult decision to make”.

“Unfortunately, we have now reached the point where we cannot safely provide the level of medical cover required to continue births at North Devon District Hospital,” she said.

“We carefully considered the risks involved. While we recognise the additional travel this will mean for some families, we believe that concentrating services where safe medical staffing can be guaranteed is the safest option for everyone who relies on our maternity services.”

Mr Higginson said women requiring birth services would be “supported to access alternative maternity units” while his trust works to restore services.

“Our work will focus on recruitment, training and service model redesign to ensure that the reinstated service is resilient and sustainable, and we welcome the involvement of our stakeholders in providing scrutiny and oversight as we do this,” he said.

“Across all the conversations we are having with women and their families, our staff, our NHS colleagues, MPs, councillors, Devon Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership and other groups, we are hearing loud and clear the issues that matter most to everyone and we are working to doing what we can to reduce the disruption and disadvantage caused by this decision.

“We are also grateful for the immense show of support from our community in sharing our consultant job adverts and promoting North Devon as a fantastic place to work and live.”

The trust said it had contacted more than 300 women and birthing people who are 34 weeks pregnant or more, as well as those identified as vulnerable or clinically high risk, to discuss their individual circumstances, care plans, and the travel and transport support available.