Seven thousand “outraged” readers backed a regional daily’s campaign to save maternity services on its patch less than a day after it was launched.

The Daily Post has set up a petition to fight a decision by North Wales’s Betsi Cadwaladr health board to remove doctor-led maternity care at one of the region’s major hospitals for at least a year.

The petition urging the Welsh government to intervene was set up on Wednesday evening and, by the following morning, had received 7,000 signatures in support.

The proposals, exclusively revealed by the Post earlier this week, is to remove doctor-led maternity care from Ysbyty Glan Clwyd (Glan Clwyd Hospital) for at least a year.

The Daily Post splashed on the story on Wednesday

It will mean pregnant mothers facing a long journey, some of them across the border to an English hospital, for obstetrics care.

The plan has hit close to home for staff at the Post’s Llandudno Junction newsroom where digital editor Clare Hickie, who is expecting her first baby this spring, is directly affected.

In a comment piece urging readers to join the campaign, she wrote: “Action must be taken now. Politicians need to put their money where their mouths are and stop this decision in its tracks.

“The Welsh NHS has taken a battering in the past few months and for the first time I agree with some of the criticism.

“We really are being offered a second rate service.”

Daily Post editor Mark Thomas said: “This decision has outraged a lot of our readers, who are getting very tired of being let down by Betsi Cadwaladr.

“We are determined that this disgraceful plan must not go ahead, and our petition is calling on the Welsh Government to step in and reverse the decision.”