THE quality of care in the Devizes Hospital maternity unit is second to none yet not enough mothers know about it.

At a consultation meeting in Pewsey on Tuesday on the future of maternity services, mum Emma Miles of Pewsey said she received fantastic treatment when her son Toby was born at Devizes six months ago.

But, she said, many expectant mothers are not made aware that they could have their babies at Devizes or Malmesbury maternity units.

In a cost-cutting exercise the Kennet and North Wiltshire NHS Primary Care Trust is proposing to axe the maternity units in both towns.

It has been holding a series of public consultation meetings around the district, but at Pewsey only four people turned up.

Mrs Miles left the PCT officers in no doubt about her strong concern that mums were being kept in the dark about the fact they could opt to go to Devizes or Malmesbury to have their babies instead of the big hospitals in Salisbury or Swindon.

Phil Day, director of community services with the PCT, gave a presentation showing that the cost for every child born at Malmesbury Hospital was £6,276 compared with £4,572 at Devizes but only £4,000 at Chippenham.

He said the maternity units were not cost effective with 93 births last year at Malmesbury and 138 at Devizes Hospital.

It was estimated that between £250,000 a year could be saved by transferring the Malmesbury maternity services to Chippenham and the Devizes midwifery unit to Chippenham and Trowbridge.

The board of the PCT will not make a final decision until consultations have been completed. It is possible that a decision will not be reached until the end of the summer.

The main point to emerge at the Pewsey meeting was that many mothers-to-be have not been told that they had a choice of birthing centres.

Coun Paula Winchcombe, Kennet District Council's health champion, said that perhaps the majority of mothers went to the bigger hospitals because of this.

Mr Day said that when the PCT checked this out with Pewsey mothers they said they were happy to stick to their existing patterns of going to either Swindon or Salisbury to have their babies.

Mrs Miles said she was living in Marlborough when she was expecting her baby and heard excellent reports about the Devizes maternity unit.

However when she mentioned it to a midwife she was discouraged from going there. She said she had spoken with other young mothers in Marlborough who said they did not realise they could go to the unit in Devizes.

She said: "I had a wonderful birth there and wonderful aftercare. It would have been so much further if I had gone to Chippenham and I would not have been comfortable going to a larger hospital."

Non executive director Ron Crook said he had visited the Devizes maternity unit three weeks previously where there was just one mother with her baby daughter.

"It was like the Marie Celeste with only one person and her baby in there," he said.

He said he would look into whether a survey had been carried out of midwives to gauge their feelings about the PCT's proposals.

"It would help give everyone a much fuller picture."