Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many speech and language therapists there were in (a) Birmingham and (b) the West Midlands in each of the last five years.

The table below shows the number of full-time equivalent speech and language therapists working in National Health Service trusts and other core organisations, in the Birmingham and Solihull integrated care system and the West Midlands as a whole, in March of each of the last six years:

Source: the Hospital and Community Health Services workforce statistics for England, published by NHS England on a monthly basis.

These staff provide services in a range of settings, including in education. However, therapists will also be directly employed by other providers, including schools, independent provision, and third sector and charitable organisations, for which data is not held centrally.