Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many vacant consultant dermatologist posts there were in the NHS on 13 January 2015.

Information on vacancies is not collected by the Department. The last annual National Health Service vacancy survey in England was undertaken by the Health and Social Care Information Centre in 2010. The survey was suspended in 2011 and then discontinued in 2013 following the publication of the Fundamental Review of Data Returns, which aimed to reduce the burden of the collection of data from NHS organisations.

Information on the number of consultant dermatologists who hold agency contracts and other contractual or financial arrangements is not held by the Department

The latest annual workforce census data, published by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), shows there were 486 directly employed consultant dermatologists working in the NHS in England as at 30 September 2013.

The next census will be published by the HSCIC on the 25 March 2015 and will provide data for September 2014.