Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many full time equivalent health visitors there were in (a) England, (b) each region and (c) each local authority in (i) May 2015 and (ii) the most recent period for which figures are available.

Health visitors are employed by a range of organisations, including National Health Service trusts, clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), local authorities and private providers. Current data collections do not cover the complete range of these organisations. As a result, it is not possible to provide accurate data on the total size of the health visitor workforce.

NHS Digital’s NHS Hospital and Community Health Service workforce statistics capture the total number of health visitors directly employed in NHS trusts and CCGs in England and by Health Education England region.

NHS Digital used to collect data on health visitors employed by local authorities and other organisations through the Health Visitors National Minimum Dataset however this collection ceased at the end of September 2015.