Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate he has made of the average time taken to progress applicants for NHS Continuing Healthcare to (a) checklist stage and (b) a full decision in (i) England and (ii) Gloucestershire; how those figures compare with target times; and if he will make a statement.

There is no information collected around time taken to progress applicants to the Checklist stage of NHS Continuing Healthcare.

The national data collection includes information on the number of applications that progress from referral to eligibility decision within 28 days. The data collection does not include information that can be used to calculate average time taken. For the period 1 April – 31 December 2017 (quarters 1-3 of 2017/18), information published by NHS England shows:

- Across England, 32,991 out of 55,920 applicants (59%) reached an eligibility decision within 28 days of referral; and

- In NHS Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) 105 out of 479 applicants (22%) reached an eligibility decision within 28 days of referral. In NHS South Gloucestershire CCG 369 out of 439 applicants (84%) reached an eligibility decision within 28 days of referral.