A hospital has changed the way midwives work so they can attend more home births.

The Brighton area has the highest number of mothers having home births in the country and Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals' NHS Trust has scrapped its on-call system for midwives and put them on a rota in a bid to increase the number of home births they can attend.

It comes after the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, was forced to tell Hannah Quinn, from Trafalgar Road, Portslade, it could not send a midwife to her home because it was short staffed.

A hospital spokesman said: "To ensure midwives are more available to attend home births we are constantly looking at how we can change the way we work.

"Recently, we have moved from an on-call system to one where midwives are rostered to work a shift, which should increase the number available to attend home births."