Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many NHS nurses are working in a community setting in England as on 12 September 2022.
NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services workforce statistics for England. These include National Health Service staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups, but excludes staff working in primary care, general practitioner surgeries, local authorities, and other providers. Within the statistics nurses are assigned a ‘setting’ in which their primary activities take place. The data shows that there are 59,374 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) nurses primarily within a community care setting, as at July 2022, the latest data available. The number of FTE nurses working primarily in a community setting has increased by 4,487 (8.2%) since July 2019. Community care settings are defined as community services, school nursing, community learning disability services and community mental health services. This number does not include health visitors.