Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of Band 7 CBT therapist posts created in each of the last five years.

The table attached shows the growth in the relevant subsection of the NHS Talking Therapies workforce over the five years to 2024. The high intensity workforce, which includes cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) therapists, increased by 2,582 between 2019 and 2024 to 6,913 full time equivalent therapists. The number of qualified, Band 7 or over, CBT therapists grew over the same period by 1,049 to 3,853 full time equivalents.

This data is published through the mental health national workforce census at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/mental-health-national-workforce-census/

The NHS Talking Therapies workforce includes staff employed by National Health Service providers and also staff in NHS-commissioned independent, local authority, and voluntary sector providers.

The data is not available for Lambeth and Southwark as local data by service is not held centrally.