A big cut in the number of antenatal checks offered to women with a normal pregnancy in England and Wales will be recommended today in NHS guidelines.

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence will advise that GPs and midwives should offer 10 visits for a first-time mother with no health complications, and seven for women with children already. At the moment women may get as many as 14 antenatal appointments as well as ultrasound scans.

Peter Brocklehurst, director of the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, who helped develop the guidelines, said antenatal care, largely unchanged since the 1920s, needed modernising. The guidelines would iron out differences in provision and spread best practice. Mary Newburn, head of policy research at the National Childbirth Trust, said the guidance would improve the quality and consistency of care.

But Liz Kendall, director of the Maternity Alliance, said there should also be a concerted effort to improve care for homeless, young, or unsupported mothers and those from minority ethnic groups.

The guidelines advise offers of screening for Down's syndrome but no routine screening for diabetes in pregnancy, because this test produced a high level of false-positive results which led to anxiety and unnecessary caesareans.