Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment has he made of the average occupancy rate of acute beds in (a) Slough, (b) the Southeast and (c) the UK.

Wexham Park Hospital offers acute services in Slough and is operated by Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust. The Department does not hold hospital site level data on bed occupancy. The latest official statistics published by NHS England for May 2023 show that the general and acute bed occupancy rate at Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust was 97.7%.

For the same period, general and acute bed occupancy in the South East was 94.3%, while the general and acute bed occupancy rate in England was 93.0%. Health is a devolved matter, and the Department does not report bed occupancy in the devolved nations.

As set out in the delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services, there will be 5,000 more staffed beds this year, alongside an extra 3,000 virtual ward beds. This is backed by £1 billion of dedicated funding.

We are also investing £1.6 billion over the next two years to reduce the numbers of beds occupied by patients ready to be discharged, and Same Day Emergency Care services will be in place across every hospital with a major emergency department, helping avoid unnecessary overnight stays.