Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if his Department will investigate the case of a West Lancashire constituent who required an inpatient bed at Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust and was informed that the nearest available bed was in Somerset.

Day to day operational decisions about the management of individual patients are a matter for NHS England and/or the trusts with responsibility for patient care.

The Government is committed to ensuring that patients with mental health conditions can receive treatment as close as possible to where they live. Inappropriate out of area placements are unacceptable and the Government has set a target to eliminate these in non-specialist, acute mental health care by 2020/21.

More than £400 million has been made available for investment in mental health crisis resolution home treatment teams over the next four years, enabling them to provide 24/7 crisis response and intensive home treatment as a genuine alternative to admission where appropriate. Shared learning and best-practice advice on reducing out of area placements through improved system capacity management will be included in acute care commissioning guidance.