NMC’s midwifery action plan

The plan sets out our work and priorities across three key areas:

• Black maternal health
• UK-wide maternity review work, and
• Supportive actions to help midwives deliver the highest standards of care.

Black maternal health

In September 2025, the Health and Social Care Committee published a report which found that racism is one of the core drivers of poor maternal outcomes. This is unacceptable, and we are committed to playing our part in tackling these health inequalities.

In response to the report’s recommendations, we have been undertaking mapping exercises of our standards. We are doing this to understand whether the minimum requirements for all midwives are being met or if we need to strengthen our standards, and to ensure a renewed focus on cultural competence, unconscious bias and anti-racism.

Where it is necessary to update our standards, we will aim to do so by November 2026, following formal consultations.

UK-wide maternity review work

We have also commissioned independent midwifery professors to review our standards of proficiency against recommendations from recent maternity reviews. This will provide assurance on where our standards align with best practice and identify areas for improvement.

To support our wider insight, we are also developing a midwifery-specific data dashboard. This will be key to helping us understand the Fitness to Practise landscape for midwives, so that we can make safer, fairer, swifter decisions that protect the public and ensure the high-quality midwifery care people deserve.

We will provide assurance that midwifery education curricula meet NMC standards by mapping the curricula for all UK universities that provide midwifery education to the NMC standards of proficiency in order to assess the alignment of midwifery education programmes.

Supportive actions

We already have several pieces of work underway, as part of our Culture Transformation Plan, to support professionals, educators and employers to deliver the safe and effective care women, babies and families have the right to expect.

• Our reviews of the Code and Revalidation process will ensure these tools continue to reflect our populations health and social care needs – from advancing equality, diversity and inclusion, to addressing findings from major inquiries and the growing role of artificial intelligence.
• Our principles for supporting women’s choices in maternity care – developed in collaboration with women, midwives and our partners across the UK to offer clear guidance for professionals to deliver high-quality, person-centred maternity care.
• Our joint campaign – ‘Good teamwork means better maternity care’ – which showcases real examples of effective multidisciplinary teamwork – highlighting how professionals, women and families can work together to deliver safe, person-centred maternity care.
• Our review of practice learning, launched in January 2024, will help to ensure practice learning requirements equip nursing and midwifery students with the knowledge and skills they need to deliver high-quality care across diverse settings.
• Our principles for advanced practice, published in June 2025, which sets out our expectations for professionals working at an advanced level, including across maternity settings – a first step towards UK-wide regulation, with detailed standards in development for consultation in 2027–2028.

We will continue to engage with professionals, the public and our partners and stakeholders across the UK, as we implement the actions set out in this plan – working collaboratively and transparently to ensure high-quality, person-centred maternity care for women, babies and families.

Paul Rees MBE, NMC Chief Executive and Registrar, said:

“Every woman, baby and family deserves safe, kind and equitable maternity care – but this is often not the reality. This action plan brings together our work across the UK to strengthen standards, promote cultural competence and support professionals to deliver high-quality maternity care and education.

“By listening to women’s experiences, learning from national reviews and working closely with our partners, we’re taking forward meaningful actions that will help improve outcomes and ensure public confidence in maternity services.

“We’ll continue to collaborate with professionals, educators, our stakeholders, employers and the public as we deliver this plan, making sure our standards and guidance supports modern, safe, person-centred midwifery practice and education across the UK.”

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