The NHS home birth service in Gloucestershire is expected to be reintroduced before Christmas.

The service was suspended across the county in November last year after safety concerns were raised by staff, according to health chiefs.

They said at the time that safety, the need to train up midwives and a review of their maternity model were the reasons for the suspension.

Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust announced in May that good progress had been made but there was still more to do to be able to reopen safely and the home birth service would not resume until the autumn.

Now they say they are planning to reopen the service before Christmas and inspectors have recognised they are “certainly on the right path with maternity”.

The Trust’s Deputy chief executive Al Sheward gave an update to Gloucestershire County Council’s health overview and scrutiny committee last and referenced the latest Care Quality Commission report and acknowledge they have “got a lot of work still to do”.

The report identified areas they need to make improvements around maternity triage, incident management and aspects of leadership governance.

“It shows we are certainly moving in the right direction and they acknowledge the progress that has been made while recognising there has to be a continued focus on improvements.”

Mr Sheward went on to explain the changes that are taking place to offer more choice for women to give birth.

“There’s currently no confirmed reopening date but we plan to introduce home birthing before Christmas,” he said.

“But I did just want to set that in the context of the size of the piece of work that has been undertaken.

“We have consulted with over 130 midwives and the time that has taken has been considerable.

“It also requires midwives to be more flexible and some will move from the community to the acute trust and some will move from the acute trust out to the community but all in the spirit of offering women better choice to deliver in their preferred location.”

Mr Sheward said the Trust can say with “some certainty” that the the home births will be reintroduced before Christmas.

He expects to be able to give councillors a “much clearer” timeline in November.

The committee agreed to keep the maternity unit as a regular agenda item for their meetings.

Cllr Rebecca Trimnell (Lib Dem, Westgate) said she too would like to see the committee “drill down” into the different aspects of the maternity services.

“At the moment we are seeing this overall which is all very good, but as a scrutiny [committee] we could look at it in a more detailed way,” she said.

Cllr Paul Hodgkinson (Lib Dem), Bourton-on-the-Water) said it was “way too premature” to stop scrutinising the maternity services at each of the meetings.

“We have to collectively make sure we are holding the NHS to account in a constructive way because there have been so many concerns raised and it has been such a high profile issue,” he said.