Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to move toward patient self-referral for community audiology services as a default pathway in (a) Chingford and Woodford Green constituency and (b) England.

Community audiology services are commissioned by integrated care boards. The priorities and operational planning guidance states that systems are expected to put in place self-referral routes to community audiology services. This was reiterated in the Delivery Plan for Recovering Access to Primary Care, which specified audiology for older people including hearing aid provision as a service for which self-referral should be available.

Self-referral is not offered for community audiology in north east London, and we have no reported issues with patient access or backlogs in adult audiology services. In Chingford and Woodford Green, residents have access to several community audiology providers in Waltham Forest, such as Audiological Science, Scrivens, Specsavers and The Outside Clinic, and also audiology services at Whipps Cross Hospital.

As part of the National Health Service primary care access recovery plan in England, approximately 380,000 people per year have been able to self-refer for services such as incontinence support, community nursing, podiatry, audiology, and physiotherapy without seeing their general practitioner.