The core purpose of this Operational Standard is to notify births, allocate NHS numbers for births and send birth details to all relevant departments thereby fulfilling statutory and screening requirements to notify others outside the maternity department of the birth.

These requirements are currently satisfied by the legacy NHS Numbers for Babies (NN4B) service which is in the process of being decommissioned. NN4B is contracted until December 2014. The standard will provide the means for a continuing service for the notification of births and the allocation of NHS numbers to newborn babies following the closure of NN4B.

The replacement service is provided by the Personal Demographics Service (PDS) and this Operational Standard defines the requirements for achieving PDS compliance for Birth Notifications. The standard will apply to those suppliers migrating from NN4B to PDS as well as new suppliers entering the maternity and child health markets and developing PDS interaction from the outset.

About this change

Further to the publication of the Birth Notifications release on 5 December 2013, this release amends the implementation date from 30 June 2014 to 31 December 2014. The implementation date has been adjusted to allow more time for suppliers and trusts to adopt the new message set.

Note that an interim review of implementation progress is scheduled for December 2014.