Scope of registration
Maternity and midwifery services
Description
This regulated activity covers maternity and midwifery services where they are carried out by, or under the supervision of, a registered healthcare professional.
You do not have to register for this regulated activity if you only provide advice, support or information related to childbirth and parenting, and providing health care is not your main purpose.
An organisation that provides this advice and is not primarily a healthcare provider (such as the National Childbirth Trust) does not need to register, even if the advice is provided by a healthcare professional who it employs.
A hospital provider still needs to register for the activity if it provides advice, because its main purpose is to provide health care.
This regulated activity does not cover arrangements that local authority social services may make under the NHS Act 2006, for the care of pregnant women and women who are breastfeeding.
Midwifery services
Services provided by midwives are exempt and do not need to register for this activity as long as the midwife is:
- acting on their own behalf (self-employed rather than acting for a partnership or organisation), and
- providing non-NHS care (that is, not under contract for an NHS service), and
- providing services to their patients only in the patient’s home and not as part of a hospital or clinic-based service.
This exemption only applies if all these circumstances are met.
Midwives who provide independent maternity and midwifery services exclusively in people’s own homes and who also carry out frenulotomy (tongue-tie treatment) procedures must register to carry on the regulated activity of Surgical procedures.
Antenatal care or postnatal care
Where antenatal or postnatal services are provided as part of primary medical care, the primary medical provider should register for Maternity and midwifery services. Where maternity services are provided as a community or outreach service, the provider will probably need to register for this regulated activity unless they only provide advice and are not primarily a healthcare provider.
The Health Care and Associated Professions (Indemnity Arrangements) Order 2014, is relevant to many healthcare professionals, including individual midwives that are exempt from registering for this activity.
Check if you need to register for Maternity care and midwifery
