CLOTHING giant Next has apologised to an East Lancashire mum after staff refused to allow her to breastfeed her baby in their shop.

Stephanie Prior, 33, was shopping for holiday clothes at Blackburn's Townsmoor retail park when five-month-old tot Luci began to cry from hunger.

Mrs Prior said she approached staff in the store at about 11.30am and asked permission to take the baby into a changing room to breastfeed her in private.

But she claims that staff refused, forcing her to abandon the clothes she had planned to buy and seek help at the Boots store next door, which let her use an office.

Today Next bosses admitted the error and said steps had been taken to ensure there was no repeat.

Mrs Prior, who lives in Bacup but was brought up in Blackburn, said: "We got to the checkout but the baby was crying and I knew she needed feeding and I said to the assistant, after I have paid for these is it okay to nip into the changing room to give her a quick feed?"

Under the law, it is legal for mothers to be refused permission to breastfeed. But campaigners are hoping to see a law passed to change that. Nicky Hargreaves, of Little Angels, the Blackburn-based group at the forefront of the campaign said: "It's very frustrating. Often it isn't store policy, it can be a personal choice by a staff member.

"Until the law is changed and it becomes illegal to stop women there is not much an individual can do about it.

"It's upsetting, especially if your baby is newborn and they're crying and people are looking at you like you're a bad mother." Mrs Prior has three children, including a 10-year-old-son and two-year-old daughter. She claims she normally has no difficulty feeding.

She said: "They have at least 15 changing rooms in that store. I left all the clothes and never bothered buying any. I was nearly crying so I came home and rang the Next customer service and put a complaint in.

"They are going to write back to me and they said they don't understand what happened.

"With all this pushing lately for breastfeeding I probably could have sat outside the store and fed Luci, but I wanted to be more discrete!"

A spokesman for Next said: "We would like to apologise. This was a regrettable incident and we have taken steps to ensure it will not happen again.

"Some of our larger stores are being equipped with facilities for mums and babies and in stores where this is not available our policy is to always treat customer requests with discretion and sensitivity.

"We try to help mums who need to breastfeed their baby by offering the use of our changing cubicles which are both spacious and private."