Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many additional inpatient beds in acute settings he has funded NHS England to commission for (a) November 2024, (b) December 2024, (c) January 2025 and (d) February 2025 above the total number available in October 2024.

NHS England’s 2024/25 Priorities and Operational Planning Guidance set out that, with the additional funding in 2023/24 made recurrent in 2024/25, systems should maintain General and Acute beds at the level funded and agreed through the operating plans in 2023/24 as a minimum.

The latest published data is for October 2024, and shows that there was an average of 101,325 General and Acute beds available in England. This compares to 99,067 in October 2023.