Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many mental health nurses have been employed by NHS funded services at each band, in each year since 2010.

NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services workforce statistics. These include staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), but not staff working in primary care or in general practitioner surgeries, local authorities or other providers.

The attached table shows the number of mental health nurses employed at National Health Service trusts and CCGs at each band as at October 2019, the latest available data and at September each year since 2010.

There is no measure of the number of mental health nurses employed in NHS-funded services carried out in the private sector.

Skills for Care completed a survey of local authorities and found that there are an estimated 3,730 approved mental health professionals in England. This data can be found at the following link:

https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/adult-social-care-workforce-data/Workforce-intelligence/publications/Topics/Social-work/Approved-Mental-Health-Professional-workforce.aspx

The Department does not hold data for mental health social workers or independent mental health advocates.