Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of NHS Ophthalmology departments that do not have enough consultants to provide a full service for patients needing treatment for (a) glaucoma and (b) wet macular degeneration.

The Department does not hold information on shortages of ophthalmology consultants. Appropriate levels of staffing will be decided by local system workforce planning.

NHS England publishes quarterly National Health Service hospital trust vacancy and job advert data. The publication sets out vacancy rates for total NHS staff and, separately, for registered nurses and doctors at a national and regional level. The latest data for December 2024 shows the vacancy rate for doctors was 5.2%. The data is not detailed enough to identify vacancy rates for ophthalmology consultants.