Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of whether direct and third-party payment Personal Healthcare Budgets for Continuing Healthcare are available to all those that need them; and what steps they are taking to ensure that NHS England provide such support when appropriate.

The Government has not made an assessment of whether personal health budgets are available to people receiving National Health Service Continuing Healthcare (CHC) that need them. Operational delivery of CHC is the responsibility of integrated care boards (ICBs) with oversight from NHS England. Quarterly performance data is used by regional NHS England teams to inform ICB assurance.

Legislation requires ICBs to provide people eligible for CHC with information about personal health budgets, to offer them the option of taking them up, and to support them to do so.

NHS England expects that, unless there are exceptional circumstances, everyone living in their own home who is in receipt of CHC funding will have a personal health budget. In 2022/23, approximately 30,000 individuals eligible for CHC were in receipt of a personal health budget.