Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what his Department's most recent estimate is of the number of people in England and Wales living with sight loss; and how that data is collected.

The information requested for England is shown in the table below. Data in respect of Wales would be a matter for its administration.

Number of people registered as blind or partially sighted as at 31 March 2014

(Data for England only)

Source: NHS Digital

Notes:

1. Data are rounded to the nearest five.

The data is derived from the triennial SSDA 902 return submitted by local authorities with adult social services responsibilities. The next data collection will take place in 2017.

Local authorities maintain registers of blind or partially sighted people who have received a Certificate of Vision Impairment (CVI) following an examination by a consultant ophthalmologist. Holders of a CVI choose whether or not to be included in their local authority’s register of blind or partially sighted people. The numbers registered are therefore likely to be an underestimate of the total number of people living with sight loss.