Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the proportion of the public aged 40-74 who have been invited for an NHS Health Check by their local authority in the past five years.

Between January 2018 and December 2022, 10,106,612 people in England were invited for an NHS Health Check by their local authority. This accounts for 59.1% of the total eligible population aged 40 to 74 years old.

Delivery of the programme was largely suspended between April 2020 and February 2022 due to the pandemic, in line with national guidance from NHS England. In the five years prior to the pandemic, April 2015 to March 2020, 13,741,360 people were invited for an NHS Health Check, equating to 87.7% of the eligible population. Data from December 2022 shows that local areas have made good progress recovering the service, with invitations having increased to pre-pandemic levels.

The Department is taking forward a programme of work to modernise the NHS Health Check, including the development of a national digital NHS Health Check to complement the face-to-face service and enable people to self-check at home.