Asked by: Baroness Coffey (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how much the creation and opening of each community diagnostic centre cost, and how much it costs annually to operate each centre.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested is not held centrally in the format requested, and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
NHS England publishes a monthly report on diagnostic activity for the 15 modalities that make up the Diagnostics Waiting Times and Activity collection. This includes details of activity undertaken in CDCs for those 15 modalities. This is published on the NHS.UK website, in an online only format. It is not, however, a complete record of all CDC activity.
NHS England also publishes a quarterly dataset of all CDC activity at a national level. This is also published on the NHS.UK website, in an online only format. The latest published CDC management information details that CDCs have delivered over 13.9 million additional tests since July 2021.
NHS England’s CDC programme has been supported by a capital budget of £1.48 billion across 2022/23 to 2024/25.
The Elective Reform Plan, published in January 2025, committed to expanding existing CDCs, as well as building up to five new ones in 2025/26, to support the National Health Service to return to meeting the elective waiting time constitutional standard. The plan also commits to CDCs opening 12 hours per day, seven days a week, and delivering more same-day tests and consultations, with an expanded range of tests.
The 2025/25 capital guidance confirmed that £1.65 billion of capital funding will be allocated to support NHS performance across secondary and emergency care, across 2025/26 more broadly. This includes £450 million which has been provisionally allocated for diagnostics, which includes CDCs, partly to expand existing and build new CDCs. £20 million has also been allocated directly to relevant trusts via a separate processes for CDC pathway productivity.
Asked by: Baroness Coffey (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many diagnostic tests have been undertaken by each community diagnostic centre on a weekly basis since each centre was opened.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested is not held centrally in the format requested, and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
NHS England publishes a monthly report on diagnostic activity for the 15 modalities that make up the Diagnostics Waiting Times and Activity collection. This includes details of activity undertaken in CDCs for those 15 modalities. This is published on the NHS.UK website, in an online only format. It is not, however, a complete record of all CDC activity.
NHS England also publishes a quarterly dataset of all CDC activity at a national level. This is also published on the NHS.UK website, in an online only format. The latest published CDC management information details that CDCs have delivered over 13.9 million additional tests since July 2021.
NHS England’s CDC programme has been supported by a capital budget of £1.48 billion across 2022/23 to 2024/25.
The Elective Reform Plan, published in January 2025, committed to expanding existing CDCs, as well as building up to five new ones in 2025/26, to support the National Health Service to return to meeting the elective waiting time constitutional standard. The plan also commits to CDCs opening 12 hours per day, seven days a week, and delivering more same-day tests and consultations, with an expanded range of tests.
The 2025/26 capital guidance confirmed that £1.65 billion of capital funding will be allocated to support NHS performance across secondary and emergency care, across 2025/26 more broadly. This includes £450 million which has been provisionally allocated for diagnostics, which includes CDCs, partly to expand existing and build new CDCs. £20 million has also been allocated directly to relevant trusts via a separate processes for CDC pathway productivity.
Asked by: Baroness Coffey (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of the availability of NHS provision for the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD in Suffolk.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
It is the responsibility of integrated care boards (ICBs) to make available appropriate provision to meet the health and care needs of their local population, including access to assessment and treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), in line with relevant National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance. The NICE guideline on ADHD does not recommend a maximum waiting time from referral for an assessment of ADHD to the point of assessment or diagnosis.
Whilst the Department has not made a specific assessment, Suffolk and North East Essex ICB advises that it has undertaken a review of children’s ADHD and autism services. As a result of the review, and current demand, the ICB has agreed additional funding of £3.3 million to support the services to not only reduce the time children are waiting for assessment but also increase the service provision to meet future demand. The ICB is also looking at potential new models of delivery and at the current pathways to see how it can utilise them more efficiently to ensure a smoother process for families.
In respect of adult ADHD and autism services, the ICB has worked closely with its local National Health Service provider, Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, to closely monitor and respond to increases in demand. In March 2024, the ICB agreed to invest £300,000 to support those patients on the waiting list with additional advice and support.
In respect of the adequacy of ADHD service provision nationally, in December 2023, NHS England initiated a rapid piece of work to consider ADHD service provision within the NHS. The initial phase of work identified challenges, including with current service models and the ability to keep pace with demand. Following this initial review, NHS England is establishing a new ADHD taskforce alongside the government, to look at ADHD service provision and its impact on patient experience. The new taskforce will bring together expertise from across a broad range of sectors, including the NHS, education and justice, to better understand the challenges affecting people with ADHD and help provide a joined-up approach in response to concerns around rising demand.
Alongside the work of the taskforce, NHS England has announced that it will continue to work with stakeholders to develop a national ADHD data improvement plan, carry out more detailed work to understand the provider and commissioning landscape and capture examples from local health systems which are trialling innovative ways of delivering ADHD services to ensure best practice is captured and shared across the system.
Asked by: Baroness Coffey (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many additional NHS dental appointments have been made available for patients as a result of the Dental Recovery Plan in Suffolk Coastal constituency.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
Our Dentistry Recovery Plan, backed by £200 million, will make dental services faster, simpler, and fairer for National Health Service dental patients. It will fund approximately 2.5 million additional appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of dental treatment. A New Patient Premium is supporting dentists to take on new patients, and since the end of January 2024, nearly 500 more practices have said they are open to new patients.
We are committed to evaluating the impacts of the measures included in our plan, and we will publish monthly data on progress once available. Dentists have two months from the date of completion of a course of NHS treatment to submit an FP17 claim for payment.
Asked by: Baroness Coffey (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to reduce ambulance waiting times in (a) Suffolk and (b) Suffolk Coastal constituency.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
Our Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services sets out the range of measures being taken to achieve our ambition of reducing average Category 2 ambulance response times to 30 minutes across 2024/25, including in Suffolk. A summary of the progress made, and actions taken in 2024/25 is set out in Urgent and emergency care recovery plan year 2: building on learning from 2023/24, which is available at the following link:
Nationally, ambulance trusts received £200 million of additional funding in 2023/24 to increase deployed hours and reduce response times, and this service capacity is being maintained in 2024/25. This is alongside the delivery of new ambulances, and action to reduce handover delays. With more ambulances on the roads, patients will receive the treatment they need more swiftly.
Since we published our plan, there has been significant improvement in ambulance response times, including in Suffolk. In 2023/24, average Category 2 ambulance response time in the East of England was over 23 minutes faster compared to the previous year, a reduction of over 34%.
Asked by: Baroness Coffey (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average (a) cost per adult and (b) length of stay was for an acute hospital bed day in the Suffolk and North East Essex integrated care system in the 2022-23 financial year.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
The average cost per adult for an acute hospital bed day by integrated care system, is not collected centrally by the Department. NHS England publishes a national cost collection which includes unit costs for non-elective inpatient stays. This data is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/costing-in-the-nhs/national-cost-collection/
The information on length of stay is not available in the format requested. NHS England publishes general and acute length of bed stay data, with data available at a trust level but not an integrated care system level. The trust level data is available at the following link:
Asked by: Baroness Coffey (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to reduce waiting times for elective surgery for people in Suffolk Coastal constituency.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
The Department plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to increase National Health Service elective activity and productivity above pre-pandemic levels, while expanding capacity through creating a new network of community diagnostic centres and maximising all available independent sector capacity.
NHS England provides robust support and challenge to the trusts which have the highest number of patients waiting the longest for elective treatment, with each receiving bespoke regional or national intervention where it is required.
Asked by: Baroness Coffey (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of provision of NHS dentists in Suffolk Coastal constituency.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
On 7 February, we published Faster, simpler and fairer: our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry, which is backed by £200 million and will fund around 2.5 million additional appointments. The plan sets out our actions to improve dental access for patients across the country to address the challenges facing NHS dentistry, including in Suffolk.
From 1 April 2023, the responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to all integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board is responsible for having local processes in place to identify areas of need and determine the priorities for investment across the ICB area.
NHS Dental Statistics, published by NHS Digital, provides data on dental activity in England. The latest annual report is available online at the following link:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-dental-statistics
Asked by: Baroness Coffey (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps her Department has taken to help increase access to dentists in (a) Suffolk Coastal constituency and (b) Suffolk.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
On 7 February, we published Faster, simpler and fairer: our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry, which is backed by £200 million and will fund around 2.5 million additional appointments. The plan sets out our actions to improve dental access for patients across the country to address the challenges facing NHS dentistry, including in Suffolk.
From 1 April 2023, the responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to all integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board is responsible for having local processes in place to identify areas of need and determine the priorities for investment across the ICB area.
NHS Dental Statistics, published by NHS Digital, provides data on dental activity in England. The latest annual report is available online at the following link:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-dental-statistics
Asked by: Baroness Coffey (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to improve access to mental health services in Suffolk Coastal constituency.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The National Health Service forecasts that, between 2018/19 and 2023/24, spending on mental health services has increased by £4.7 billion in cash terms, compared to the target of £3.4 billion set out at the time of the NHS Long Term Plan. All integrated care boards are also on track to meet the Mental Health Investment Standard in 2023/24.
Almost £16 billion was invested in mental health in 2022/23, enabling over 3.5 million people, including in the Suffolk Coastal constituency, to be in contact with mental health services, a 10% increase on the previous year.