Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has held discussions with the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust on potential factors that contributed to bed occupancy rates at the Trust between October and December 2025.

My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has not held discussions with the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust on potential factors that contributed to bed occupancy rates at the trust between October and December 2025. However, in line with normal practice, NHS England regional teams hold discussions with the trust on performance, including bed occupancy rates. We started planning earlier and have taken more action than in previous years to prepare for winter pressures. We closely monitored the impact of winter pressures on the National Health Service over winter months, providing additional support to services across the country as needed.

As set out in the Urgent and emergency care plan 2025/26, the NHS is focused on improvements that has seen the biggest impact on urgent and emergency care performance during winter including:

• expanding access to urgent care in primary, community, and mental health settings, which includes increasing the number of people supported by Urgent Community Response teams and treated in virtual wards;
• improving hospital flow through accident and emergency departments, with a focus on reducing the number of patients waiting more than 12 hours and making progress towards eliminating corridor care;
• reducing the average length of stay for patients requiring an overnight emergency admission by at least 0.4 days, returning closer to pre-pandemic levels; and
• agreeing local pathway profiles to support discharge capacity planning and eliminate internal discharge delays of more than 48 hours in all settings.