Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many children's hospices have closed in England in each year since 2010; and in which regions of England were those hospices located.

Information on the number of hospices which have closed in England since 2010 is not held.

There are currently around 223 registered independent hospices, and a very small number of public hospices run internally by National Health Service trusts. Around a quarter of these are children’s hospices. The vast majority of hospices are primarily charity-funded but receive some statutory funding from clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and the Government for providing local services. CCGs are responsible for determining the level of NHS-funded hospice care locally and they are responsible for ensuring that the services they commission meet the needs of their local population.

As part of the NHS Long Term Plan, NHS England committed to increase its investment in children’s palliative care over the next five years by match funding CCGs who commit to increase their investment in local children’s palliative and end of life care services.

Subject to CCGs increasing investment, NHS England will match this by up to £7 million a year by 2023/24. This increase is in addition to the Children’s Hospice Grant, which provides an annual contribution of £11 million. NHS England is currently establishing financial reporting systems to monitor the baseline investment of CCG in children’s palliative and end of life care services. This will enable match funding payments to be made to CCGs where the investments are increased above the investment baseline in the previous year. As baselining will be ongoing through 2019/20, and therefore match funding will not be available in this year, NHS England will be increasing the children’s hospice grant to £12 million for this period.