Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if her Department will take steps to reduce the waiting time for specialist electric wheelchairs for NHS patients.

Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for the provision and commissioning of local wheelchair services and the development of their local wheelchair service eligibility criteria based on the needs of their local population.

NHS England is taking several steps to reduce regional variation in the quality and provision of National Health Service wheelchairs including any specialist electric wheelchair provision, and to support ICBs to reduce delays in people receiving timely intervention and wheelchair equipment. These include establishing a national wheelchair dataset, developing a national wheelchair tariff, publishing a wheelchair model service specification, and introducing personal wheelchair budgets.

Information on waiting times for specialist electric wheelchairs for NHS patients is not held centrally. Although there is a national data collection for wheelchair services, which includes waiting times data, this does not include specific data on the type of wheelchair provided. We do not currently have any plans to make an assessment of the potential impact of the time taken to receive specialist electric wheelchairs on NHS patients.