Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to improve access to effective (a) symptom management and (b) pain relief for people with chronic urinary tract infections in Harpenden and Berkhamsted constituency.

The Harpenden and Berkhamsted constituency is served by the Hertfordshire and West Essex Integrated Care Board (ICB). The ICB applies the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s guidelines for the treatment of urinary tract infections (UTIs) to the treatment of chronic UTIs. The ICB has a defined care pathway which ensures that if primary care management is not sufficient, then patients are swiftly referred to specialist care for more intensive support, including further investigations and management of their symptoms and their pain.

Appropriate treatment and support for people with chronic UTIs are dependent on receiving an accurate diagnosis. Diagnostic tests for chronic UTIs, such as urinalysis and urine culture, are widely available across all pathology networks in England, including Hertfordshire and West Essex. Ensuring accurate diagnostic testing not only aids more effective identification of infection but can also reduce unnecessary prescribing and overprescribing of broad-spectrum antimicrobials, and directly benefit patients in Harpenden and Berkhamsted, who will get the right treatment sooner.

General practitioners can request testing for chronic UTIs via several pathways, including at point-of-care, via community diagnostic centres, or via laboratories. Laboratories across England adhere to stringent quality standards for diagnostic tests, including the UK Accreditation Standard ISO 15189, and implement robust internal and external quality assurance schemes. Together, these measures ensure the accuracy and reliability of diagnostic testing.

Through the National Institute for Health and Care Research, the Department is supporting work to understand the research gaps on UTIs that matter most to patients, carers, and clinicians. This is through a James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership (PSP), led by Antibiotic Research UK, Bladder Health UK, and The Urology Foundation. This partnership will publish its findings in spring 2026. The aim of the Chronic and Recurrent UTI PSP is to identify the unanswered questions about chronic and recurrent UTIs from patient, carer, and clinical perspectives and then to prioritise those that patients, carers, and clinicians agree are the most important for research to address.

NHS England is also supporting research into newer, more accurate point-of-care tests for UTIs, such as via the Toucan study. Further information on the study is available at the following link:

https://www.phctrials.ox.ac.uk/recruiting-trials/toucan-platform-for-uti-diagnostic-evaluation