Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve the discharge process for patients in Surrey who are medically fit to leave hospital.

The Urgent and Emergency Care plan for 2025/26 identifies reducing delays in hospital discharge as a key priority. Further information on the Urgent and Emergency Care plan for 2025/26 is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/urgent-and-emergency-care-plan-2025-26/

Hospitals are expected to eliminate discharge delays of more than 48 hours caused by in-hospital issues, to work with local authorities to tackle the longest delays, starting with those over 21 days, and to profile discharges by pathway to support local planning. In addition to this, we published a new policy framework on 30 January 2025 for the £9 billion Better Care Fund policy framework 2025 to 2026, which requires the National Health Service and local authorities to jointly agree local goals for reducing discharge delays. Further information on the Better Care Fund policy framework 2025 to 2026 is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/better-care-fund-policy-framework-2025-to-2026

We are working with trusts, integrated care systems, and local authorities to share and embed best practice and to help them to use performance data more effectively to address their discharge delays. The Local Government Association has published a range of guidance documents and high impact change models to support improvements to hospital flow and discharge processes, which can be found at the following link:

https://www.local.gov.uk/our-support/partners-care-and-health/better-care-fund-support-programme-2025-26

Officials held a call on 18 July 2025 with the Epsom and St. Helier Trust regarding the trust’s discharge challenges and proposed actions to improve the situation.