Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that publicly accessible defibrillators are registered on The Circuit Database.

According to the British Heart Foundation, who operates The Circuit, there are now over 110,000 registered defibrillators in the United Kingdom. This is an increase of 30,000 since September 2023.

Many charities which supply defibrillators through a fund require those defibrillators to be registered on The Circuit. Many defibrillator charities also promote The Circuit on their website.

The Government considers introducing legislation to require publicly accessible automated external defibrillators (AEDs) to be registered on The Circuit or other independently owned AED databases at this time to be disproportionate. Local communities obtaining AEDs do so on a voluntary basis and introducing legal requirements could disincentive this voluntary action. Therefore, there are currently no plans to bring forward such legislation.