Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps are being taken to ensure the availability of inpatient beds in acute psychiatric hospitals in south London.

The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health is clear that everyone should be able to receive the care they need in the least restrictive setting and as close to home as possible. This means a local acute inpatient bed should always be available if required. To support this aim NHS England and NHS Improvement have put in place a clinically-led national programme of support for areas experiencing high bed pressures and consequent reliance on acute mental health out of area placements. The programme supports areas to identify and address the key causes of their capacity pressures, focusing on effective pathway management and the availability of community-based alternatives to inpatient care. South London is one of 16 areas which have received support from this programme to date, and every sustainability and transformation partnership nationally now has a trajectory in place to eliminate acute out of placements due to local bed pressures by 2021.