Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of trends in the level of social work vacancy rates in Newbury.

We do not hold information for specific localities, and therefore no assessments have been made. We are committed to the recruitment and retention of social workers, through our existing initiatives like bursaries and the Assessed and Support Year in Employment, which helps build a supply of social workers with the right skills, knowledge, and values.