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Fertility policy review

When the ICB carried out a review of its fertility policy, we engaged with local people to share the proposed changes and gather their views.

Although the proposed changes to the fertility policy did not substantially change the policy or eligibility for specialist fertility services, the ICB decided to share the proposals on what we know is an important topic for patients and their families.

We made it clear in the engagement that the proposed changes did not address the ambitions of the women’s health strategy published in 2022. We expect that this will lead to national policy decisions in due course. We also explained that we anticipate that there will be more significant, national reviews of fertility policy in the future.  

138 people gave their views by completing our short survey. Most people who responded were female and over 30 years of age, with the largest group being aged 60 or over.

Read more about the fertility policy review and proposed changes

What you said about the fertility policy review

  • People broadly supported the proposals we set out.
  • A few respondents thought that we should implement the recommendations in the women’s health strategy locally before any national decisions are made.
  • Some respondents thought that we shouldn’t expect people to wait as long as proposed after a miscarriage, to be eligible for specialist fertility treatment.
  • There were a wide range of views expressed on the issue of transgender and non-binary inclusive language. Some felt that we shouldn’t be concerned with this issue. Others said that the policy needed to acknowledge transgender and non-binary people and to allow fair access.

What we did with feedback on proposed changes to the fertility policy

We used the feedback from the engagement as part of developing our updated policy.

Read the update to the fertility policy following the review

As part of the engagement people shared comments about wider issues on access to treatment. We have passed on these comments to people who are working on this.

Next steps

We anticipate that there will be further engagement on fertility policy. We will encourage local people to take part in any public consultation about new policies that come out of the women’s health strategy implementation plan and will share information about it as widely as we can.

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