Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the report commissioned by the Department of Health and Health Education England and published in December 2014 by the Centre for Workforce Intelligence, <i>Securing the future workforce supply: Speech and language therapy stocktake</i>, and in particular of its reference to "a high level of current unmet needs for speech and language therapy, particularly for adolescents".

The Department established Health Education England (HEE) with a clear duty to ensure an effective system is in place for education and training in the National Health Service and public health system and that our future workforce has the right numbers, skills, values and behaviours to meet patients’ needs today and tomorrow, taking account of all the available evidence.

The Centre for Workforce Intelligence (CfWI) was commissioned to undertake a stocktake of the speech and language therapy (SLT) workforce in England that investigates the current balance of demand and supply for SLTs and explores how this is expected to change by 2025. The scope included all SLTs, including those working in the public and private sector.

HEE plans to commission 668 Speech and Language therapist training in 2015-16, an increase of 3.7% over 2014-15. HEE will take the content of the CfWI SLT stocktake into account in their workforce planning and future commissioning decisions.