WORRYING stillbirth statistics at Royal Bolton Hospital sparked concern from health bosses.

An annual assessment of Bolton’s Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) rated it good overall but maternity services were found to require improvement.

This led the CCG chiefs to request an explanation from Royal Bolton Hospital.

CCG chairman Wirin Bhatiani said: “[The assessment] highlighted the maternity services were rated as requires improvement, the rating takes into account four indicators, maternal smoking, neonatal mortality, stillbirths and choices of maternity services.

“The key thing members were anxious about were neonatal mortality and stillbirths.”

This week staff from the hospital reassured the CCG board that they had made a lot of improvements and the recent report did not accurately reflect the situation in the hospital.

The annual assessment by NHS England used data from 2016 to rate the different CCGs maternity offerings and the hospital was keen to show the CCG how they had been improving since then.

Figures from the hospital, which caters for 6,000 mothers a year, show the highest number of stillbirths was in May 2015 with around 6.5 per 1,000 births.

This rate did begin to drop through that year and throughout 2016 to a low of around 4 per 1,000 but spiked again in May 2017 to around 6 per 1,000.

Since then the rate has continually dropped to July 2018 (2.98 per 1,000) but has crept up to 3.62 in September.

The last national average for stillbirths from the Office for National Statistics (2016) is 4.4 per 1,000 births.

Since 2016 the NHS has been working to improve maternity care across the country with its Better Births initiative. One of the aims is to reduce stillbirths by half by 2025.

The scheme wants to eliminate variation in care across the country.

Speaking to the CCG board Val Clare, head of midwifery at Royal Bolton said in maternity the same mistakes would be repeated "over and over" but this new initiative was helping the hospital learn from its mistakes.

One of the key aims of the hospital at the moment is halving the number of babies admitted to neo-natal care due to hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar) by next year. They have begun working to detect and manage the condition earlier.

Ms Clare said a lot of work was also being done to reduce smoking in pregnant mothers and currently the Bolton average is at 13.1 per cent, in line with the national ambition for below 14 per cent.

The hospital has also been working to make sure mothers know how often their baby should be moving to ensure they can receive help in a timely manner.