Oh baby, it's official!

Bradford is in the grip of a baby boom.

According to a survey of Britain's most populated cities, Bradford is top of tots.

For every thousand of the city's residents, there are 14.8 live births.

And that equates to 5,500 babies being born in Bradford's hospitals every year, with another 1,000 being delivered at Airedale and Keighley hospitals - 50 per cent more than the least fertile cities of Plymouth and Edinburgh.

Today Derek Tuffnell, obstetrician at Bradford Royal Infirmary for nine years, said: "We have the highest number of deliveries than any other hospital in Yorkshire, so this does not surprise me.

"A significant proportion of deliveries are to Asian mothers, who tend to have larger families. I will commonly see Asian women with their fifth, sixth or even seventh child, but white women are having fewer babies now than 20 or 30 years ago."

In the 2001 census, the number of children aged four and under in Bradford had increased by one per cent in ten years to 33,240 out of 467,665 people.

Dr Yunas Samad, Bradford University lecturer in sociology, agreed with Mr Tuffnell.

He said: "Unlike most UK cities Bradford has an expanding city population, due in part to intercontinental marriages.

"About 20 per cent of the city's population is from the ethnic minorities, where there's a cultural emphasis on having larger families and at a young age."

Bradford is followed in the birth rate league by Birmingham and Leicester, both places with a high Asian populations.

And in other aspects, Bradford fits the bill of health for good fertility levels, having the fewest fast food outlets compared to other cities surveyed and the fewest amount of pubs, with only eight per 100,000 population.

Dennis Jones, a health development specialist, said: "Britain has the highest birth rate in Europe, particularly among teenagers.

"But in Bradford, there are fewer terminations than in many other cities like Leeds and Manchester."

He added that male fertility had dropped by 50 per cent in the last 30 years worldwide, mainly due to environmental factors.

But be warned. According to the survey carried out by Men's Health magazine, men in Bradford and Leeds are more likely to get killed in a car accident than anywhere else in Britain, with 7.1 deaths on the roads per 100,000 men.

Pictured is Pudsey mother Kavita Kumar, 20, with daughter Swati, aged two. But Kavita says she plans to buck the trend and have no more children!