Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the trends in waiting times for Autism Spectrum Disorder assessments; and if he will make a statement.

The Department has made no recent assessment of the trends in waiting times for autism spectrum disorder assessments.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines recommend that the time from a referral to a first appointment is no longer than three months.

The latest available data for the country as a whole is available in Public Health England’s report, ‘Autism Self-Assessment Exercise 2016 Detailed report and thematic analyses’ (published June 2017). The report states that 33 local authorities (22%) reported already meeting the NICE recommended waiting times, 35 (23%) anticipated meeting NICE recommended waiting times by March 2017 and to be able to sustain this thereafter and 66 (43%) did not anticipate being able to reach NICE recommended waiting times sustainably by March 2017. 18 local authorities did not respond to the relevant question.

Collection of national waiting times data from referral to a first appointment and on to a diagnosis if one is given, began in April this year. Results will be published in due course.