We run our cord blood bank as a public bank to help anyone who needs a stem cell transplant. It doesn’t cost you anything to donate your baby’s cord blood to our programme.

Commercial cord blood banks charge to collect and store your baby’s cord blood for private family use. If you want to use one of these companies, you need to contact them directly. The Human Tissue Authority’s guide for parents gives further information about what to consider when thinking about private cord blood banking.

We’ll store it until someone needs it for a transplant (or for research, if there aren’t enough stem cells to use for a transplant). We can store cord blood indefinitely, frozen in cryogenic tanks at temperatures of around -190°C.

We can’t guarantee that we’ll bank your baby’s cord blood. We may not bank it if it does not contain enough stem cells to be considered suitable for transplantation. We will test your baby's cord to check the number of stem cells before banking it. 

Take a look at the How can I donate my umbilical cord? page.

It costs thousands of pounds to establish a new cord blood centre, so we need to focus our funding in the most effective way. We know that lots of babies are born at these four hospitals every year, and that these areas have a diverse population. We need to make sure our cord blood bank is as ethnically diverse as possible, so more people have more chances of finding a lifesaving match.