Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Health Building Note 09-03: Neonatal Units, published 20 March 2013, how many and what proportion of neonatal units (a) do and (b) do not meet the standard for parent accommodation.

Not all maternity hospitals are currently able to offer adequate accommodation for families who have experienced a bereavement. This is due to the historic undercapitalisation across the National Health Service, as highlighted by the Darzi Report.

As a first step towards improving our maternity and neonatal estate, we are investing over £100 million through the 2025/26 Estates Safety Fund to address critical safety risks on the maternity estate, enabling better care for mothers and their newborns.

The provision of bereavement suites is included in current estate standards on the design and planning of new maternity units. This is delivering improvements, as our enquiries suggest that current NHS capital programmes progressing maternity new builds include the provision of an appropriate bereavement suite.