Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average travel distance was for (a) adults and (b) children needing inpatient mental health services in England at (i) March 2017 and (ii) the most recent date for which data is available.

The Government is committed to ensuring that patients with mental health conditions can receive treatment as close as possible to where they live.

The following table shows the average distance from home (in kilometres), for mental health inpatients for children and adults in England at the end of March 2017 and July 2018 (the most recent period for which data is available). This data comes from the Mental Health Services Dataset.

Average distance from home in kilometres for people in mental health wards, March 2017 and July 2018.

Notes:

1. Data has been excluded where either the distance was unknown or the recorded distance was 0. This can happen where a patient has been in hospital for a long period of time and the home postcode of the patient is no longer known.
2. Data is for patients who have an open ward stay at the end of period.