Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what support his Department is providing to NHS trusts to support mental health inpatient wards operating above safe occupancy levels.

Individual mental health trusts and local health systems are expected to effectively assess and manage their bed capacity. NHS England’s mental health, learning disability, and autism inpatient quality transformation programme is supporting cultural change and a new model of care across all National Health Service-funded mental health inpatient services, so that people can access timely, high-quality community support, closer to their families and loved ones. Local health systems have now published their three-year plans for localising and realigning inpatient care, in line with this vision.

As set out in our 10-Year Health Plan, we are focussing on treatment that is away from hospital and inpatient care and are making sure that more mental health crisis care is delivered in the community through new models of care and support, so that fewer people need to go into hospital.