Fresh concerns have been raised about plans to send up to 200 women from Whitehaven to Carlisle to give birth.

Health chiefs say it is all due to changes in paediatrics, which mean that mothers whose babies are most likely to need special care would be booked to give birth at the Cumberland Infirmary, rather than West Cumberland Hospital.

They are currently working to identify what criteria would be used to identify those who would have to travel.

But county councillor Rebecca Hanson, who sits on the Cumbria Health Scrutiny Committee, has raised new concerns.

She said that aside from obvious risk factors, such as multiple births or the health of the mother, it is impossible to predict when a baby is going to need extra care.

Speaking at the latest scrutiny meeting, she said: “It is usually women with small babies, but you can’t predict that in advance.”

Peter Rooney, chief operating officer at NHS Cumbria Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), which is behind the changes to maternity and paediatrics, said they have looked at previous cases.

“There is a strong correlation between known risk factors in advance of the birth and the likelihood of being admitted to a special care baby unit. Some babies where there when there were no known risk factors, but there is a strong correlation,” he explained.

But Mrs Hanson challenged him on that point, saying the minority of special care babies actually had no known risk factors.

“When you zoom in on the numbers, the majority are women with small babies. That’s not something you can diagnose in advance.

“A lot of women think they are going to have a small baby and don’t, and a lot have a small baby when they didn’t know about it. That’s why the numbers don’t stack up for me,” she said.

Mr Rooney stressed that although changes are planned, no mothers would be sent to Carlisle until they had clear evidence that there would be a benefit. “The evidence is not as straight forward as we would like it to be. I want to assure the committee that no one is rushing to make this change just to say we’ve done it,” he added.