Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for each of the last five financial years, what data is available on the uptake of a) the Non-Emergency Patient Transport Service, and b) the Healthcare Travel Costs Scheme among patients living in rural versus non-rural areas.

No data is centrally held on the uptake of Non-Emergency Patient Transport Service provision. The following table shows the Healthcare Travel Costs Scheme’s uptake over the last five financial years:

The usage of the schemes cannot be disaggregated by rural/non-rural areas as the data is not collected in this way.