Community Audiology

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) for choosing this as a subject for debate.

It was fascinating to hear from the Father of the House about his time in the Honourable Artillery Company, listening to the guns and then perhaps regretting it in later years. It reminds us of our responsibility in this House to try to prevent problems that may emerge later. Last weekend, I was reading about a former colleague of mine, Lieutenant Colonel Rob Page, who has suffered 20% hearing loss off the back of his time testing the Ajax vehicle. Plainly, that is something we have to watch out for.

This debate is about community audiology. In my Devon constituency, I represent people who care a great deal about hearing health. Honiton and Sidmouth has the sixth oldest constituents in the country by demographics. Local health data shows that 7.3% of residents in the Devon ICB area report hearing loss or deafness. That compares with an average in England of 5.8%.

In an ageing population, this is about the older age profile of all of our communities. In my constituency the median age is 57, so hearing loss is very common and hearing care is essential. Johns Hopkins University found that people with moderate hearing impairment are more than twice as likely to experience a fall as those without hearing loss. Falls in older people often lead to hospital admissions and then to a significant loss of independence.

The Health Secretary has characterised the plans for NHS reform as being partly about a shift from sickness to prevention and from hospital to communities. Plainly, community audiology will have to sit at the heart of this. In Devon, community audiology has been complicated by some major changes in provider arrangements. Until March this year, Chime Social Enterprise delivered NHS audiology services and routine community audiology. Chime had its challenges, but it had a local presence, including in a lot of towns that I represent. It had drop-in clinics for people who needed urgent repairs or had urgent issues. However, from 1 April 2025, NHS Devon integrated care board commissioned several new providers in place of Chime for routine and specialist audiology, and that changeover has caused a lot of problems.

One elderly constituent, who has relied on hearing aids for more than 25 years, told me that she had to wait from June until September before she was able to see her usual audiologist. When she finally got to her appointment in Sidmouth, she discovered that the new provider had no access to her medical records, and she was told that she would have to come back in November to have new hearing aids fitted and supplied. Something that should not have taken very long at all took a total of five months. That was not just five months of inconvenience waiting for an appointment; it was five months of struggling to communicate with the rest of the world. I wrote to NHS Devon after being inundated by similar reports, and I received a reply to my letter of 16 June saying that the changeover was happening as fast as NHS Devon could make it happen.

Although waiting times appear to be improving, this disruption is not unique to Devon and it reflects wider pressures across the community. Across NHS community audiology in England, 38% of people were waiting six weeks or more for audiology appointments. That is set against the fact that the national hearing loss charity the RNID reports that about 70% of people who go private receive hearing aids or support within two weeks. Plainly, we are seeing that when community audiology breaks down, patients wait longer for appointments, continuity of care is lost, and those who cannot afford to go private get left behind.

That is not supporting the transition—from hospital to community, and from treatment to prevention—that the Government want. If the NHS is truly to prevent hearing loss in the community, community audiology must work for patients every time, and that includes in rural and coastal areas such as the one I represent.