Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the average waiting times are for Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services for patients (a) over 65 and (b) over 75 years of age, in each year since 2011.

The information requested is shown in the table below:

Mean waiting times^1,2 (in days) to enter treatment of Improving Access to Psychological Therapy referrals who finished a course of treatment³ in 2014/15 and 2015/16 at England level and split by age group.

Notes:

¹Waiting time to enter treatment is calculated as the number of days between the referral received date and the first attended treatment appointment. Referral received date and the first treatment appointment dates do not necessarily occur in the year.

²The waiting times here are based on the current methodology, used in the 2014-15 and 2015-16 annual publications, which calculates waiting times based on the number of referrals finishing a course of treatment in the year. Previous years' annual data are based on an earlier methodology that is not comparable with the data included here.

³In order to finish a course of treatment, a referral must have ended in the year with at least two treatment appointments having been attended in the course of the referral.