Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what records have been kept by his Department indicating the number of (a) district nurses and (b) qualified nurses, excluding health visitors, working in community service at NHS organisations in England and Wales since May 2010.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre publishes provisional monthly National Health Service hospital and community health service (HCHS) workforce statistics of directly employed staff in NHS trusts and social care trusts in England.

Since May 2010 the overall number of nurses has increased by 3,379 (1.1%). As part of the Government's response to the Francis Inquiry, many of these increased nurses have been in hospital settings. However, the Government's longer term ambition is to train increasing numbers with the skills to work across all clinical settings. The Mandate to Health Education England recognises the need for a greater emphasis on community, primary and multi-integrated health and care, requiring working in multidisciplinary teams to break down barriers between primary and secondary care.

The following table shows the numbers of qualified nurses (excluding health visitors), district nurses and health visitors in the NHS in England since May 2010. It covers nurses and midwives working in community based services, determined by the area of work in which they perform the greatest share of their duties. It does not necessarily indicate the setting in which they work.

The provision of health services in the United Kingdom is a devolved issue. The contact for Wales is available from the link below:

Wales: http://wales.gov.uk/topics/health/?lang=en