A FERTILITY clinic which provides 250 cycles of treatment a year in Teesside is to close after struggling to recruit specialist staff.

Fertility services provided by North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation trust will change at the end of March.

While some general infertility treatments will still be on offer, licensed treatments such as IVF will end.

A review of services at the University Hospital of Hartlepool's assisted reproduction unit showed it was unable to recruit enough embryologists to carry out the current service safely.

A spokeswoman for the Trust said: "The trust will be working with other service providers to look at the way services are provided in the future and to ensure that patients continue to receive appropriate treatment.

"A staff consultation has begun and every effort will be made to redeploy the staff within the trust."

Patients are being told of the changes and the trust said they would be supported while they were transferred to another unit of their choice.

The service began in the early 1990’s before moving to the new refurbished unit in 2008 and provides, on average, 250 cycles of licensed fertility treatments each year.

The new unit was hailed as being able to offer treatments and success rates to rival Harley Street when it reopened in 2008.

Medical director David Emerton said: “This decision is not a reflection of the quality of the service which has been provided for a number of years by the trust.

"We understand that this decision will be disappointing for patients. We have made every effort for some time to recruit, however we cannot continue to provide all aspects of the current service safely due to an inability to recruit embryologists.”

Alex Cunningham, Labour MP for Stockton North, said: “It is extremely sad to see another service provided by the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust is to be lost to residents north of the River Tees – this time because they can’t recruit the expert staff needed.

“There have been warnings time and again that the hospital can often struggle to recruit the expert medical staff they require to provide the services needed by people in our area.

“Throughout the planning for the new hospital, first axed by the Tory-led government in 2010 only to be reconsidered over the next five years before being ditched altogether last year, it was made clear that a new hospital would provide the 21st century environment which would attract the best of clinical staff.

“Instead, the Government decided a meagre £25 million to update some facilities would suffice. Clearly it won’t, and the Trust can’t recruit the staff they need."