Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will require NHS and social care services to ensure that power-assisted wheelchairs and power add-on devices are available to wheelchair users.

Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for the provision and commissioning of local wheelchairs services, based on the needs of their local population, and NHS England supports ICBs to commission effective, efficient, and personalised wheelchair services. Any equipment provided will be agreed following a clinical assessment and based on the needs identified.

NHS England is taking 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 data set which looks at waiting times across the pathway to enable targeted action if improvement is required; publishing a wheelchair quality framework which sets out quality standards relevant to all suppliers; and the introduction of personal wheelchair budgets to give people greater choice in the selection of manual and electric wheelchairs.