Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answers of 20 November to Questions 2738 and 2739 on Intensive Care: Hospital Beds and Hospital Beds respectively, if she will make a comparative estimate of the number of NHS acute hospital beds (a) available and (b) required in winter 2023-24; how many and what proportion of the 5,000 additional beds that were promised have been deployed; and what her planned timeframe is for the deployment of the remainder of the 5,000 beds in each constituency.

Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Transport

Published data from NHS England shows that there were 99,067 total general and acute (G&A) beds available in October 2023, including 96,781 core beds and 2,285 escalation beds.

Our Delivery Plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services set the ambition to increase the core G&A bed base by 5,000 permanent staffed beds in 2023/24 compared to planned levels for 2022/23. This would increase the number of core beds to 99,500. As of October, the National Health Service has delivered 2,281 additional core beds. NHS England continues to work with local systems and trusts to deliver this ambition this winter.

G&A bed numbers are expected to peak in January 2024 in response to expected demand. A breakdown of these additional beds by constituency is not available centrally.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the number of hospital beds for acute treatment.

Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Transport

Our Delivery Plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services set the ambition to increase the core general and acute bed base, above originally planned 2022/23 levels, by 5,000 sustainable, permanent beds in 2023/24. This takes the funded core bed base to over 99,000. NHS England in continuing to work with local systems and trusts to deliver this ambition.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many ICU beds there are in England; what the average occupancy of those ICU beds is; and what guidance he provides to hospitals on levels of safe occupancy of those beds.

Answered by Will Quince

NHS England publishes weekly data on adult critical care, paediatric and neonatal beds in the Urgent and Emergency Care Winter Sitrep. This shows that in the week ending 22 January 2023, there was a daily average of 6,110 total ICU beds available in England, of which the daily average occupancy was 76.2%:

- Of the total ICU beds, 4,049 beds were adult critical care, of which 80.6% were occupied.

- 356 beds were paediatric intensive care beds, of which 81.7% were occupied.

- 1,705 bed were neonatal critical care beds, of which 64.8% were occupied.

Latest statistics can be found at the following link: https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/uec-sitrep/urgent-and-emergency-care-daily-situation-reports-2022-23/

Guidance for the delivery of intensive care services is a matter for NHS England and relevant professional bodies. No such guidance is provided by the Department.