TWIN girls have been born to a Worcester couple who won fertility treatment through a newspaper competition.

Lydia and Will Stark, from Rainbow Hill, were selected to undergo a single cycle of IVF treatment after unsuccessful attempts to conceive naturally.

Midland Fertility Services (MFS), based in Walsall, carried out the treatment funded by the Birmingham Post's Funded Fertility Treatment for All campaign.

The Starks became parents last Thursday after the safe delivery of Neve and Freya, weighing 4lbs 13.5oz and 6lbs respectively.

With mother and babies doing well the family returned to their Rainbow Hill home at the weekend.

Mr Stark, a 32-year-old teacher at South Bromsgrove High School, said: "We are really happy. It's hard work but we are adjusting and I am on paternity leave at the moment and then there is also the Easter holidays to come."

He added that the competition highlighted the importance of helping provide treatment for couples with fertility problems.

"Obviously it is expensive but everyone should be given a least one chance to start a family."

Mrs Stark, a 30-year-old retail manager, was diagnosed as having endometriosis and blocked fallopian tubes in her early 20s.

She said: "Getting funding so we could have our treatment at MFS has meant everything to us because we now have the beautiful babies we have dreamed of for so many years."

They were awarded funding for their IVF treatment after submitting an application to the newspaper's campaign for universal funded fertility treatment.

Applications were considered by a panel of fertility specialists who based their decisions to grant funding on common criteria for the suitability for fertility treatment.

It was was designed to highlight the Secretary of State for Health's recommendation for all PCTs to fund, from April 1 2005, a minimum of one cycle of fertility treatment for every woman under the age of 39 who required assisted conception. One year later, no non-funding PCTs have introduced new funding for fertility treatment.

Dr Gillian Lockwood, medical director of MFS, said: "Access to funded treatment has given them the chance to become parents, an opportunity still denied to many of the UK's one in six couples who need assisted conception."