Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to support NHS England’s commitment to reduce the number of inpatient beds for people with learning disabilities by 35 per cent.

‘Building the Right Support’, published in 2015 by NHS England, the Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services is the national plan in England for reducing the number of people with learning disabilities or autistic people who are in a mental health inpatient setting. It set out a clear framework for commissioners to reduce inpatient capacity by developing more community services for people with learning disabilities or autistic people with behaviour that challenges.

The NHS Long Term Plan commits to implementing the ‘Building the Right Support’ plan in full, achieving a 50% reduction in the number of people with a learning disability or autism who are inpatients in mental health settings (compared to the figure in 2015) by the end of 2023/24 and ensuring that every local economy has specialist community provision. NHS Planning Guidance for 2019/20 requires the National Health Service to achieve a 35% reduction as quickly as possible and no later than the end of 2019/20.

The Department will hold NHS England and all other delivery partners to account on achieving this.