Mental Health Services
(asked on 6th July 2026) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people were being cared for in forensic support services in each year since 2013-14, broken down by a) high, b) medium and c) low secure services.
The following table shows spending on forensic support services according to high, medium and low secure services between 2013/14 and 2023/24, the most recent year for which data is available:
Financial Year | High Secure (£m) | Medium Secure (£m) | Low Secure (£m) |
2013/14 | 152.7 | 594.8 | 571.4 |
2014/15 | 220.9 | 503.9 | 587.8 |
2015/16 | 223.4 | 530.6 | 498.9 |
2016/17 | 218.9 | 552.5 | 515.2 |
2017/18 | 226.4 | 557.4 | 522.6 |
2018/19 | 218.9 | 578.9 | 524.0 |
2019/20 | 229.1 | 574.4 | 522.8 |
2020/21 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
2021/22 | 249.0 | 595.9 | 509.7 |
2022/23 | 256.7 | 657.9 | 625.4 |
2023/24 | 277.0 | 720.4 | 617.4 |
Source: NHS England, Regional Spend Analysis
Notes:
2020/21 figures were not collected due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
There is other spending categorised as “forensic” which is not specifically related to high, medium and low secure services.
The following table shows the number of unique patients who were being cared for in forensic support services in each year since 2016/17, the earliest year for which data is available, broken down by high, medium and low secure services:
Financial Year | Low | Medium | High |
2016/17 | 4348 | 4133 | 780 |
2017/18 | 4253 | 4015 | 785 |
2018/19 | 4152 | 4007 | 765 |
2019/20 | 4069 | 3915 | 751 |
2020/21 | 3832 | 3792 | 744 |
2021/22 | 3563 | 3465 | 771 |
2022/23 | 3406 | 3368 | 763 |
2023/24 | 3297 | 3304 | 725 |
2024/25 | 3175 | 3234 | 690 |
2025/26 | 2985 | 3312 | 693 |
Source: NHS England
Notes:
The earliest reporting period available from the Specialised Mental Health Patient-Level Dataset is 2016/17. From 2021/22 onwards, the data has been sourced from the Mental Health Services Dataset.
The figures represent unique patients within each service category and financial year. However, for unique patients, this is not a distinct count of all patients across secure services. A patient may therefore be counted more than once in the total if they moved between security levels during the same financial year.
The same patient may also appear across multiple financial years.