Department of Health and Social Care

The Department published guidance in 2024 called Discharging people at risk of or experiencing homelessness to support the care transfer hub, which is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/discharging-people-at-risk-of-or-experiencing-homelessness/discharging-people-at-risk-of-or-experiencing-homelessness

This guidance recognises the necessity for multi-disciplinary teams. It recommends that dedicated housing options officers are embedded within the care transfer hub and advises hospitals treating over 200 homeless patients a year to offer access to a specialist multi-disciplinary homeless discharge team.

Some areas of the country have introduced High Intensity Use Services to proactively meet the needs of the most frequent attenders of the local accident and emergency, a significant portion of whom are experiencing homelessness. These services include multi-disciplinary teams that are helping to address health inequalities faced by this cohort while alleviating pressure on urgent and emergency care pathway,

The Government is committed to supporting the timely delivery of new vaccination programmes to fully protect the public from vaccine preventable diseases. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation meets regularly to consider both current and future vaccine products and to advise ministers accordingly.

The Department works with NHS England and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to secure supply deals with manufacturers, stockpile doses, and coordinate logistics to ensure fast deployment, working at pace to update guidelines and training documents so that the workforce providing vaccines is ready to go.

To boost capacity, the Department is exploring new ways of delivering vaccinations including health visits and community pharmacy, with pilots for administering vaccinations as part of health visits standing-up from January 2026. Digital tools also ensure speedy and efficient rollout, for instance: online booking via the NHS app; automated reminders; and data dashboards to track uptake and tweak priorities in real-time. Finally, the Department works with NHS England and the UKHSA to develop targeted communications campaigns, advertising, and social media to build trust and drive appointments, aiming for high coverage from day one. Programme planning by the UKHSA and NHS England occurs simultaneously to ensure delivery of safe, clinically effective, stable, and accessible programmes that commence at the right time and are rolled out in a timely manner after a policy decision has been made.

Following the Prime Minister’s announcement of the abolition of NHS England, we are clear on the need for a smaller centre, as well as scaling back integrated care board running costs and NHS provider corporate cost reductions in order to reduce waste and bureaucracy.

£860 million of planned resource funding has been re-profiled from later to earlier years of the Department’s Spending Review settlement. This will enable the Department to continue making progress towards halving headcount across the Department and NHS England. This will unlock savings of £1 billion a year by the end of the Parliament, equivalent to the cost of over 115,000 extra hip and knee operations.

The Department works closely with NHS England to monitor levels of regional variation in eligibility for NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC). This includes NHS England implementing an operational assurance regime across regions which promotes accurate assessment, equal access, standardisation, and consistency within CHC funding.

This assurance regime has a specific focus on reducing unwarranted variation in CHC across the country. To support this further during 2025/26, NHS England has increased their regional assurance meetings from every three months to every two months.

To support improved patient experience in relation to CHC, the NHS Performance and Assessment Framework for 2025/26 also includes an assurance standard for Integrated Care Boards to monitor the percentage of Standard CHC referrals completed within 28 days.

Following the Prime Minister’s announcement of the abolition of NHS England, we are clear on the need for a smaller centre, as well as scaling back integrated care board running costs and NHS provider corporate cost reductions in order to reduce waste and bureaucracy.

Redundancies are anticipated to cost approximately £1 billion in total, with most exit activity concentrated in 2025/26 and 2026/27, to release savings as soon as possible and to align to the available funding. The precise split between financial years and organisations is being worked through as operational delivery planning progresses.

Data for the occupancy and utilisation rates of clinical rooms in the NHS Estate for the latest period, which was 2023/24, published in December 2024, is available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/estates-returns-information-collection/summary-page-and-dataset-for-eric-2023-24

The five-day resident doctor strike in July 2025 had an estimated cost to the National Health Service of approximately £240 million and this was a starting estimate for the planned November strike. The costs were lower than in July 2024 as a result of lower turnout. We continue to update estimates as new data becomes available, in line with receiving business as usual financial data from NHS systems.

The NHS has tried and tested plans in place to minimise disruption and will work with partners to ensure safe care for patients continues to be available and emergency services continue to operate.

When a mother chooses to have support from the father or partner during labour, birth, and in the postnatal period, the father or partner should feel welcome to stay with her. Where possible, fathers or partners are offered a chair or fold up bed to enable them to stay with the birth mother. These temporary items are to ensure the flexibility of the space in the room. Many maternity units also have 24-hour access for fathers and partners.

Not all maternity units are currently able to offer accommodation for birth partners. This is due to the size of the inherited estate and historic undercapitalisation across the National Health Service, as highlighted by the Darzi Report. 11 out of the 16 new hospitals to be built as part of the New Hospitals Programme will have maternity and neonatal units, which include parental accommodation.

It is for the Lincolnshire Integrated Care Board, working closely with National Health Service providers and other stakeholders, to commission services to meet the needs to their population and deliver value for the taxpayer.

I understand that a range of services, across primary and secondary care, are in place in Lincolnshire to support the diagnosis, treatment, and management of patients with pulmonary fibrosis, including at the United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust.

We will publish an impact assessment as part of the material to accompany the required primary legislation which will be brought forward when parliamentary time allows.

Work is progressing at pace to develop the design and operating model for the new integrated organisation, and to plan for the smooth transfer of people, functions, and responsibilities. It is only right that with such significant reform, we commit to carefully assessing and understanding the potential impacts, as is due process. These ongoing assessments will inform our programme as appropriate.

The Government is committed to transparency and will consider how best to ensure that the public and parliamentarians are informed of the outcomes.

The Government is committed to transparency and evidence-based policy making. In line with established best practice for impact assessments, we will publish proportionate assessments to support these reforms. Where appropriate, assessments will be published alongside relevant consultations or decisions to enable scrutiny by Parliament and the public. These will be proportionate to the scale of the reform, and will support decision-making with clear evidence, analysis of options, and consideration of affected groups.

Financial information, including any redundancy costs, projected savings, and other material implications, will be disclosed in line with Government reporting requirements and transparency commitments.

On 1 November 2018, cannabis-based products for medicinal use were placed in Schedule 2 to the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001. The regulations permit the prescribing of these products by, or under the direction of, specialist clinicians on the General Medical Council Specialist Register, and for use in clinical trials.

On 2 June, the Government asked the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), a statutory independent scientific advisory body that advises the Government on drug-related issues, to review the effects of the 2018 law change. This will look at whether the changes have had the desired impact, and whether there are any unintended consequences. The ACMD is an independent scientific advisory body and determines its own procedures.

The ACMD published a public call for evidence running from 17 September 2025 to 17 October 2025, inviting submissions of evidence from all stakeholders, including, but not exclusive to, clinicians, patient bodies, scientists, and researchers. The Department alerted interested parties to the ACMD call for evidence, including the Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society, as secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Medical Cannabis under Prescription, and patient bodies, including the Medcan Family Foundation.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is responsible for ensuring medicines, medical devices, and blood components for transfusion meet applicable standards of safety, quality, and efficacy. The MHRA rigorously assesses the available data, including from the Yellow Card scheme, and seeks advice from the Commission on Human Medicines, the MHRA’s independent advisory committee, where appropriate, to inform regulatory decisions, including amending the product information.

The MHRA has received a total of 11,348 United Kingdom based reports through the Yellow Card scheme associated with reaction term tinnitus, including worsening of tinnitus, from 1 January 2014 up to and including 27 November 2025. The reports received between 2014 and 2025 were for a wide range of medicinal products which include antidepressants, hormonal medicines, vaccines, antipsychotics, antibiotics, cardiovascular medicines, drugs used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, sedatives, drugs used to treat dementia and diabetes, drugs used to treat osteoporosis, Parkinson’s disease, and pain. The following table shows a yearly breakdown of reports associated with tinnitus, from 2014 to 2025, and in total:

It is important to note that anyone can report to the MHRA’s Yellow Card scheme and the recording of these reports in the Yellow Card database does not necessarily mean that the adverse reactions have been caused by the suspect drug. Many factors must be considered in assessing causal relationships, including temporal association, the possible contribution of concomitant medication, and the underlying disease. We encourage reporters to report suspected adverse reaction reports, and the reporter does not have to be sure of a causal association between the drug and the reactions, as a suspicion will suffice.

The number of reports received cannot be used as a basis for determining the incidence of a reaction, as neither the total number of reactions occurring, nor the number of patients using the drug, is known. All fatal reports, including those reporting completed suicide, are assessed by the MHRA, and cumulative information is reviewed at regular intervals.

The Government is carefully considering the work by the Patient Safety Commissioner and her report, which set out options for redress for those harmed by valproate and pelvic mesh. This is a complex issue involving input from different Government departments.

For 2025/26, there is an efficiency and savings target of approximately £11,076 million across all integrated care systems. At month six, the projected delivery for the year remains all but on track against the total efficiency and savings target, with a forecasted shortfall of £5.7 million.

The table below sets out the efficiencies and savings delivered by systems since 2022:

Prior to appointment, non-executive candidates are required to declare all relevant interests. Appropriate mitigations are then put in place and approved by the Department.

This process was carried out for the Rt Hon. Alan Milburn, whose interests, and any updates to them, are available in the Department’s Annual Report and Accounts and on the GOV.UK website in alignment with Government policy.

The Government’s 10-Year Health Plan commits to delivering a National Health Service that is fit for the future, and we recognise the importance of supporting NHS trusts to manage and maintain their estates using operational capital allocations.

The Government’s recently published 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy set out 10-year maintenance budgets for the public estate, confirming £6 billion per year for the maintenance and repair of the NHS estate up to 2034/35.

Within this overall figure, the Government is providing over £4 billion in operational capital in 2025/26 and has now allocated a further £15.6 billion directly to providers over the following four years, from 2026/27 to 2029/30. Providers have also been given further five-year operational capital planning assumptions covering 2030/31 to 2034/35, allowing them to plan longer term with confidence and accelerate investment decisions aligned to local priorities, including repairs and maintenance.

In addition to operational capital, the Estates Safety Fund, established in 2025/26, will continue, with £6.75 billion investment over the next nine years to target the most critical building repairs and ensure safe environments for healthcare delivery.

We also continue to support trusts to drive down their energy bills and boost their resilience. Since 2020 the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has funded over £1 billion in NHS energy projects. This now being bolstered by the Department for Health and Social Care’s £130 million collaboration with Great British Energy. This is funding solar installations at approximately 260 NHS sites and is estimated to deliver lifetime energy bill savings for the NHS of up to £325 million, with the average NHS site estimated to save approximately £35,000 a year in energy bills.

We acknowledge that ambulance performance has not consistently met expectations in recent years, and we are taking serious steps to improve performance across the country including rural and semi-urban areas. That is why we published our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26, backed by almost £450 million of capital investment, which commits to reducing ambulance response times for Category 2 incidents to 30 minutes on average this year.

The National Health Service constitutional standards for ambulance response time metrics are measured with an average figure as well as a 90th centile standard which means that trusts are held to account for the response times they provide to all patients, improving the performance management of the ‘long tail’ of delayed ambulance responses that we know can particularly affect rural and semi-urban areas. Recent NHS England figures show a 23-minute improvement in the Category 2 90th centile response time compared with last year.

Local NHS integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for service commissioning decisions in their local communities, including ambulance provision for rural and semi-urban communities. ICB funding allocations for ambulance services take account of rurality and patient density to cover the longer travel distances to incidents and greater time required to convey patients to hospitals.

As set out in the Plan for Change, we are committed to returning by March 2029 to the National Health Service constitutional standard that 92% of patients wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment, to help ensure patients get timely access to the procedures they need.

We promised change, and we’ve delivered early, with a reduction in the waiting list of over 230,000 since the Government came into office, despite over 26.4 million referrals onto the list in that period.

We also exceeded our pledge to deliver an extra two million appointments, tests, and operations in our first year of Government, having delivered 5.2 million additional appointments between July 2024 and June 2025.

This progress has been made through setting ambitious targets, investing in modernisation, reforming and simplifying pathways, increasing surgical and diagnostic capacity, and empowering patients with faster and more convenient access to care.

Dedicated and protected surgical hubs transform the way the National Health Service provides elective care by focusing on providing high volume low complexity surgery, as recommended by the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

That is why we are investing in hubs as part of the £1.65 billion of capital funding in 2025/26 announced at the 2025 Spending Review to support NHS performance across secondary and emergency care.

Since the Government came to office, 22 more surgical hubs have opened, bringing the total to 123 operational across England. We are committed to increasing that number over the next three years.

Treatment plans are agreed between clinicians and patients based on clinical needs. Only those who are not ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom are required to pay for healthcare in England unless an exemption applies. Payment plans are agreed between trusts and the patient based on their individual circumstances, and where it is appropriate to do so.

We are expanding routes into clinical professions, including allied health professions, through apprenticeships. Apprenticeships provide new routes into professional work, help boost retention, and give existing staff new ways to progress in their career, as well as widening access to opportunities for people from all backgrounds and in underserved areas.

To remove financial barriers to training, the NHS Learning Support Fund provides all eligible allied health profession students with a non-repayable training grant of a minimum of £5,000 per academic year in addition to student loans.

For the training of current staff, it is the responsibility of individual employers to invest in the future of their workforce and ensure appropriate ongoing training and continuing professional development to ensure they continue to provide safe and effective care.

As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, the Government is committed to making the NHS the best place to work, by supporting and retaining our hardworking and dedicated healthcare professionals. To support this ambition, the Government will introduce a new set of standards for modern employment in April 2026. The new standards will reaffirm our commitment to improving retention by tackling the issues that matter to staff.

The information requested is not held in the format requested. The NHS England 111 calls offered and abandoned are all published. The NHS 111 Minimum Data Set was the official source of Integrated Urgent Care data from 2011 until the end of March 2021, and is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/iucadc-new-from-april-2021/nhs-111-minimum-data-set/

The annual national data is provided for each financial year. The Integrated Urgent Care Aggregate Data Collection was published as experimental statistics from June 2019, using April 2019 data, until May 2021, using March 2021 data. This data collection is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/iucadc-new-from-april-2021/nhs-111-minimum-data-set/

The Government is committed to putting patients first, nationally and in the South Bolton and Walkden Constituency. This means making sure that patients, including those waiting for joint replacement surgery, are seen on time and ensuring that people have the best possible experience during their care.

The South Bolton area is predominantly served by the Bolton NHS Foundation Trust (FT), whilst the wider region including Walkden is served by the Manchester University NHS FT.

At the Bolton NHS FT, over half, or 55.6%, of waits on the trauma and orthopaedics (T&O) waiting list, which includes joint replacement surgery, were waiting within 18 weeks, an improvement of 8.8% since the start of July 2024. The number of long waits of more than 52 weeks has also reduced by 67% over the same period, down to 83.

At the Manchester University NHS FT, 45% of T&O waits were within 18 weeks, an improvement of 3.7%. The number of long waits of over 52 weeks has also reduced by 6% over the same period, down to 893.

We set out in the 2025 Elective Reform Plan, the productivity and modernisation efforts needed to reach the National Health Service constitutional standard that 92% of patients wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment by March 2029. The plan outlines actions that will help to ensure care is delivered in the right place. This includes £1.65 billion of capital funding in 2025/26 to increase capacity for elective and emergency care, partly through new surgical hubs. Hubs deliver quicker access to common surgical procedures, including T&O services. In October 2025, capacity in one of two surgical hubs that are part of the Manchester University FT was expanded, namely the Trafford Hospital Elective Surgical Hub. This means more patients can receive treatment faster and begin recovery sooner.

The Government remains committed to continuing to expand the number of hubs over the next three years to increase surgical capacity and deliver faster access to common procedures including T&O procedures.

The following data reflects employees’ self-declared disability information as of the end of September 2025. The following table shows the number of Department staff who declared as having a mental health condition by grade, as of September 2025:

Note: [c] means the figure is confidential and has been suppressed due to small numbers of less than five

In addition, the following table shows the number of Department staff who declared as having a physical disability by grade, as of September 2025:

Since July 2024, five new community diagnostic centres (CDCs) have started reporting activity for the very first time. None of these five will be run by the independent sector (IS) once they are fully operational. Of these five CDCs, the Thanet CDC is temporarily using magnetic resonance imaging services leased from an IS provider to ensure temporary capacity while the main facility is built. Upon completion of the permanent site, the Thanet CDC site will be National Health Service owned and use only NHS owned assets.

Since July 2024, 23 new surgical hubs have opened. None of these surgical hubs are run by IS providers.

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has held a series of meetings with harmed and bereaved families from across the country to hear about their experiences of maternity care and the wider healthcare system, most recently meeting with families failed by maternity care at Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust. He has also twice visited Nottingham to meet with families involved in the ongoing independent review of maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.

The Hon. Member and other local constituency MPs were invited to a meeting. However, the Hon. Member was unable to attend.

The Secretary of State has committed to ensuring the voices of women and families are at the heart of improving standards.

Baroness Amos has published the terms of reference for the national maternity and neonatal investigation. The terms of reference fully incorporate neonatal care into its aims. The full terms of reference are available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-maternity-and-neonatal-investigation-terms-of-reference/national-maternity-and-neonatal-investigation-terms-of-reference

The Government has no plans to introduce further professional or regulatory requirements for those undertaking ultrasound scans. While there are no legal requirements for those carrying out ultrasound in the United Kingdom to hold specific professional qualifications or registration, all providers in England who provide ultrasound scans must be registered with the Care Quality Commission and meet its fundamental standards, which includes ensuring that anyone carrying out such activity has the appropriate skills, knowledge, and experience.

The Government is committed to driving service improvements and reducing health inequalities for people with a learning disability. There are currently no plans to introduce a specific modern service framework for learning disability services.

A wide range of work is underway to improve the care of people with a learning disability. The NHS Learning Disability Improvement Standard supports National Health Service trusts by setting guidance on safe, personalised, and high-quality care provision. The standards are designed to support organisations in assessing the quality of their services and to promote uniformity across the NHS in the care and treatment provided to people with a learning disability.

People with a learning disability are identified as a priority cohort in the national Core20PLUS5 programme, which seeks to drive local action on health inequalities. NHS England has developed and embedded indicators to monitor access, experience, and outcomes for Core20PLUS populations.

Integrated care boards (ICBs) are required to have an Executive Lead for learning disability and autism, ensuring there is senior oversight and accountability for tackling health inequalities. Every ICB has a requirement to consider and demonstrate how they will reduce the health inequalities faced by people with a learning disability and autistic people within their local populations within the five year strategic plans required as part of the Medium-Term Planning Framework issued by NHS England in October 2025.

The NHS Act 2006 requires ICBs to have regard to the need to reduce health inequalities and NHS England produces a Statement of Information on Health Inequalities setting out advice for ICBs on how they can achieve this duty. Published in November 2025, this year the statement includes specific reference to people with a learning disability and autistic people.

The remits of the National Director of Patient Experience, the National Quality Board, and the forthcoming Quality Strategy will encompass all patient groups, including those with learning disabilities. The remit of the National Director of Patient Experience will include listening to the experiences of people with learning disabilities and understanding their priorities for improvement.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is responsible for ensuring medicines, medical devices, and blood components for transfusion meet applicable standards of safety, quality, and efficacy. The MHRA rigorously assesses the available data, including from the Yellow Card scheme, and seeks advice from the Commission on Human Medicines, the MHRA’s independent advisory committee, where appropriate, to inform regulatory decisions, including amending the product information.

The MHRA has received a total of 44 United Kingdom based reports through the Yellow Card scheme associated with the reaction term visual snow syndrome received up to and including 25 November 2025. The table attached shows the yearly breakdown of substances associated with visual snow syndrome, each year from 2017 to 2025.

It is important to note that anyone can report to the MHRA’s Yellow Card scheme, and the recording of these reports in the Yellow Card database does not necessarily mean that the adverse reactions have been caused by the suspect drug. Many factors must be considered in assessing causal relationships, including temporal association, the possible contribution of concomitant medication, and the underlying disease. We encourage reporters to report suspected adverse reaction reports, and the reporter does not have to be sure of a causal association between the drug and the reactions, as a suspicion will suffice.

The number of reports received cannot be used as a basis for determining the incidence of a reaction, as neither the total number of reactions occurring, nor the number of patients using the drug, is known. All fatal reports, including those reporting completed suicide, are assessed by the MHRA and cumulative information is reviewed at regular intervals.

The data is not available in the format requested. NHS England collects and publishes monthly data on the total number of attendances for all accident and emergency types, including Minor Injury Units and Walk-in Centres. The total number of accident and emergency attendances at Basildon Hospital in October 2025 was 12,475. Please note this data is provisional, and that finalised figures will be published next month. The data is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ae-waiting-times-and-activity/ae-attendances-and-emergency-admissions-2025-26/

The most significant driver of the growth in the expenditure noted in the financial update is an increased volume in clinical activity and the use of implantable devices to treat patients. This has been driven by the overall growth in elective activity as part of the elective care recovery programme.

Private finance initiative contracts are not held by the Department. Contracts are held between the local National Health Service trust and their respective private finance company.

The Department’s Private Finance Centre of Best Practice (CoBP) team, together with the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, provides expert support and advice to public authorities with private finance initiative contracts, to improve the performance of existing contracts and manage their expiry.

The Department focuses on supporting trusts to assess the costs and performance of their contracts, to help maximise support for frontline services and make every penny of our NHS funding count. The Department supports trusts on a case-by-case basis considering all options available whilst maintaining contractual compliance. The contracts were let for a prescribed period of time, with the terms set at the outset with limited areas for renegotiation. The CoPB team, however, continues to assess opportunities to refinance debt where possible and where it would provide value for money.

As set out in the 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy (the Strategy) and the 10-Year Health Plan, in addition to significant capital investment, the Government would explore the feasibility of using new Public Private Partnership (PPP) Neighbourhood Health Centres (NHCs).

The Budget, published on 26 November 2025, builds on the Strategy and the 10-Year Health Plan by confirming that the NHS Neighbourhood Rebuild Programme will deliver new NHCs through upgrading and repurposing existing buildings and building new facilities through a combination of public sector investment and a new model of PPPs.

To ensure the NHC PPPs are managed transparently and are fiscally sustainable, these partnerships will be budgeted for as if they are on a balance sheet.

Delivering new NHCs through a combination of public investment and PPPs will also allow, for the first time, for evidence to be built and compared between different delivery models.

The Department publishes guidance for United Kingdom-issued S1 holders when moving and retiring abroad. UK-issued S1 holders should notify the relevant UK authorities, including their general practitioner, so their general practice registration can be removed. The full guidance can be found at the following link:

www.gov.uk/guidance/moving-living-or-retiring-abroad

The S1 scheme is part of Reciprocal Healthcare Agreements between the UK and European Economic Area/Switzerland. In England, people with a registered UK S1 residing abroad are exempt from charging under the NHS (Charges to Overseas Visitors) Regulations 2015 while on a temporary visit. The National Health Service is required to check for the S1 entitlement before applying this exemption. There are therefore no measures in place to prevent or recoup costs from people holding a UK-registered S1. In exchange for providing this additional benefit for UK S1 holders, the UK receives a discount to costs for their healthcare in the country where they live.

The 10-Year Health Plan outlines plans to pilot Staff Treatment Hubs, to provide a high-quality, wellbeing and occupational health service for all National Health Service staff. Work is underway to develop implementation and operational plans for the Staff Treatments Hubs. This will determine factors such as location, budgets, timeframes and capacity. The Staff Treatment Hubs were designed to be inclusive of primary care workers delivering NHS contracts including general practitioners and NHS dentists.

The 10-Year Health Plan outlines plans to pilot Staff Treatment Hubs, to provide a high-quality, wellbeing and occupational health service for all National Health Service staff. Work is underway to develop implementation and operational plans for the Staff Treatments Hubs. This will determine factors such as location, budgets, timeframes and capacity. The Staff Treatment Hubs were designed to be inclusive of primary care workers delivering NHS contracts including general practitioners and NHS dentists.

We acknowledge that accident and emergency care performance has not consistently met expectations in recent years, and we are taking serious steps to address this.

Our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26, backed by almost £450 million of capital investment, commits to at least 78% of accident and emergency patients being admitted, transferred, or discharged within four hours by March 2026.

We are putting significant funding into expanding urgent and emergency service access for those most in need, including new Urgent Treatment Centres and Same Day Emergency Care facilities. This will mean 800,000 fewer accident and emergency patients waiting over four hours this year.

In July 2025, we published our 10-Year Health Plan which commits to reducing accident and emergency waiting times in the longer-term, by shifting care into the community with Neighbourhood Health Services.

There are clearly defined national standards for patient access to urgent and emergency care with a clinically led model that prioritises those in the greatest need. While NHS England routinely monitors and evaluates Category 1 and 2 ambulance response times by clinical condition, e.g. cardiac arrest or stroke, NHS England does not record the cause of the incident, e.g. assault or injury sustained during a burglary. The requested data on the number of ambulance callouts for violent or assault-related injuries and injuries sustained during a burglary or break in is not centrally collected. Similarly, response and handover times for such incidents are not available. No specific assessment has been made of ambulance delays on the survival and recovery rates for these victim groups.

For data on crime-related incidents, including assaults and burglaries, please refer to police-recorded crime data, which is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/police-recorded-crime-and-outcomes-open-data-tables

There are clearly defined national standards for patient access to urgent and emergency care with a clinically led model that prioritises those in the greatest need. While NHS England routinely monitors and evaluates Category 1 and 2 ambulance response times by clinical condition, e.g. cardiac arrest or stroke, NHS England does not record the cause of the incident, e.g. assault or injury sustained during a burglary. The requested data on the number of ambulance callouts for violent or assault-related injuries and injuries sustained during a burglary or break in is not centrally collected. Similarly, response and handover times for such incidents are not available. No specific assessment has been made of ambulance delays on the survival and recovery rates for these victim groups.

For data on crime-related incidents, including assaults and burglaries, please refer to police-recorded crime data, which is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/police-recorded-crime-and-outcomes-open-data-tables

There are clearly defined national standards for patient access to urgent and emergency care with a clinically led model that prioritises those in the greatest need. While NHS England routinely monitors and evaluates Category 1 and 2 ambulance response times by clinical condition, e.g. cardiac arrest or stroke, NHS England does not record the cause of the incident, e.g. assault or injury sustained during a burglary. The requested data on the number of ambulance callouts for violent or assault-related injuries and injuries sustained during a burglary or break in is not centrally collected. Similarly, response and handover times for such incidents are not available. No specific assessment has been made of ambulance delays on the survival and recovery rates for these victim groups.

For data on crime-related incidents, including assaults and burglaries, please refer to police-recorded crime data, which is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/police-recorded-crime-and-outcomes-open-data-tables

There are clearly defined national standards for patient access to urgent and emergency care with a clinically led model that prioritises those in the greatest need. While NHS England routinely monitors and evaluates Category 1 and 2 ambulance response times by clinical condition, e.g. cardiac arrest or stroke, NHS England does not record the cause of the incident, e.g. assault or injury sustained during a burglary. The requested data on the number of ambulance callouts for violent or assault-related injuries and injuries sustained during a burglary or break in is not centrally collected. Similarly, response and handover times for such incidents are not available. No specific assessment has been made of ambulance delays on the survival and recovery rates for these victim groups.

For data on crime-related incidents, including assaults and burglaries, please refer to police-recorded crime data, which is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/police-recorded-crime-and-outcomes-open-data-tables

The Government is determined to get the National Health Service back on its feet, so patients can be treated with dignity. We recognise that the practice of providing clinical care in corridors is unacceptable and are committed to eradicating it from our NHS.

Our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan, published in June, sets out steps we are taking to achieve this. Backed by a total of nearly £450 million of capital funding, we are expanding Same Day Emergency Care and Urgent Treatment Centres, helping to avoid unnecessary overnight admissions to hospital and supporting more efficient diagnosis, treatment and discharge for patients.

The plan also includes a commitment to publish data on the prevalence of corridor care. NHS England has been working with trusts since 2024 to put in place new reporting arrangements related to the use of temporary escalation spaces, to drive improvement. The data quality is currently being reviewed, and we expect to publish the information shortly.