Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress his Department has made in ensuring additional NHS appointments are made available to people in North East Somerset and Hanham constituency.

Tackling waiting lists is a top priority for this Government. We have exceeded our pledge to deliver over two million more elective care appointments. More than double that number, 4.9 million more appointments, have now been delivered in England.

On 6 January, NHS England published a plan titled Reforming elective care for patients, which sets out a whole-system approach to delivering on the commitment that 92% of patients will wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment, in line with the NHS constitutional standard, by March 2029. The plan is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/reforming-elective-care-for-patients/

Progress is being made in the North East Somerset and Hanham constituency, which spans two integrated care boards (ICBs). In both ICBs, around 60% of patients wait under 18 weeks for elective care.

As of June, average waiting times have decreased across both ICBs, compared to the same period last year. Over the last 12 months there has been a 3.5 percentage point increase in the number of people waiting less than 18 weeks. The number of patients waiting over a year has also decreased by 2%.