Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps they are taking to improve access to disability equipment.

Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for commissioning services to meet the health needs of their local population, and responsibility for providing equipment to disabled people typically falls to local authorities and the National Health Service.

Local authorities in England have a statutory duty to arrange for the provision of community equipment for disabled people in their area. Responsibility for managing the market for these services, including commissioning and oversight of delivery, rests with local authorities.

The NHS Medium-Term Planning Framework sets targets in 2026/27, for ICBs and community health service providers to increase community health service capacity to meet growth in demand and to actively manage long waits for community health services reducing the proportion of waits over 18 weeks and developing a plan to eliminate all 52-week waits. Whilst targets are not service line specific, this should impact positively on community health services providing disability equipment such as wheelchairs.