The Royal Free Hospital, where senior medics are opposing plans to close the maternity unit

THE proposal to close the Royal Free maternity unit offers an insight into some of the core problems that will shape our borough not just today but long into the future.

Doctors, midwives and nurses have this week come out against the plans to close the Pond Street hospital’s maternity clinic, first reported by the New Journal in November of last year.

Nationally, maternal death rates are rising. Against this backdrop, Royal Free staff argue their hospital provides rare and vital “multidisciplinary” care to pregnant women with pre-existing health conditions – a group at heightened risk of dying during pregnancy.

Staff also say the consultation is “heavily weighted towards the care of the babies, sidelining the welfare of women”, warning the decision will put vulnerable women at risk.

The proposal to close the unit comes after NHS chiefs said the number of babies born in the Royal Free has fallen by around 12 per cent each year since 2018/19.

This falling birth rate is having a knock-on effect on schools across the borough, creating a pupil shortage crisis that has forced the closure of four Camden primary schools in recent years.

A combination of factors are driving families away. The capital is in the grip of a housing crisis that makes home ownership unachievable for the vast majority of young families.

Add the astronomical house prices to the punishing cost of childcare – the United Kingdom has some of the highest childcare costs in the world – and it isn’t difficult to see why so many people are choosing to start families elsewhere.

London is becoming a hostile environment for “normal” people who do not draw a banker’s salary at the end of every month.

As young families on low and middle incomes are pushed into the suburbs, the capital will be rendered an increasingly economically homogeneous zone. According to the estate agent Hamptons, more than 150,000 left London for the commuter belt in 2022.

If the government does not act to fix the housing crisis and reduce childcare costs, we can expect to see more maternity units – and schools – close across the capital.

Failure to act will impact Camden not just today but long into the future, as generations of young people who might have built a life in the borough grow up elsewhere.

Without intervention, London could soon become a city without children.