HUNDREDS of Huddersfield women are likely to have their babies in Halifax from next year.

Hospital staff are pressing ahead with plans which mean that pregnant women who need Caesarean section operations will no longer have them at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary.

Instead, Huddersfield women who need to have their babies delivered surgically would have to go direct to the Calderdale Royal Hospital in Halifax or, in an emergency, be taken there by ambulance.

Managers at both hospitals are working to bring in plans agreed in March, 2000, regarding the shake-up of maternity services. But they will not give details of the timescale.

Four years ago the former Calderdale and Huddersfield Health Authority decided that high-risk births should be delivered at the Calderdale Royal.

Low-risk deliveries would take place at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary and at the Calderdale Royal.

It is now understood that managers are getting closer to implementing the plans.

By next year, Huddersfield may be left with just a midwife-led delivery service for low-risk births.

A survey showed that just over one in five babies are delivered by Caesarean section.

The news comes after a highly charged campaign - led by the Examiner - to allow Huddersfield women to have their babies in the town.

Unofficial sources say that one reason why high-risk births continued to take place at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary for the past four years was because there was a shortage of room at the Calderdale Royal.

Delivery staff in Halifax are understood to already feel under pressure coping with demand from Calderdale women.

Workers have had to be drafted in from holiday to meet the need.

A spokesman for the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust, which runs the Royal Infirmary and the Calderdale Royal, said: "Following a period of formal public consultation in 1999, it was agreed by the former Calderdale and Huddersfield Health Authority in March, 2000, that local neo-natal intensive care, high-risk obstetric in-patient services and in-patient paediatric services should be located at the Calderdale Royal.

"Non-high-risk obstetric deliveries, ante-natal and post-natal care and outpatient and day case paediatric services would be provided at both main hospital sites."

The spokesman added: "Planning continues across the trust to determine how to achieve these changes, to best meet the needs of women and children across Calderdale and Huddersfield."

THOUSANDS of Huddersfield people fought to keep maternity services at the Royal Infirmary in a 12-month campaign launched by the Examiner.

The Born and Bred campaign - fought throughout 1999 and 2000 - came after health officials considered switching all maternity services from Huddersfield to a hospital being built in Halifax.

The newspaper galvanised people from every walk of life into action.

Mothers, grandmothers, nurses, former hospital staff, councillors and MPs joined the fight to retain the vital services - and preserve the town's birthright.

The ultimate fear was that there would be no more babies born in the Infirmary, no more people proud to say: "I was born in Huddersfield."

The then Health Secretary, Frank Dobson, was lobbied by the Examiner's editor at the time, John Williams.

Also, campaign leaders took a petition to 10 Downing Street.

Then in March, 2000, the health authority agreed to keep both a maternity unit and a special care baby unit at the Royal Infirmary.