Safeguarding is firmly embedded within the core duties and statutory responsibilities of all organisations that provide National Health Services. The organisations that manage adult gender dysphoria clinics will have reference to NHS England's Safeguarding Accountability and Assurance Framework, 5th edition, published 2026, that sets out the safeguarding roles and responsibilities for NHS-commissioned providers and sets out the legal framework for safeguarding adults.

The Government has announced that it will appoint a statutory Maternity and Neonatal Commissioner. The full scope and role of the Maternity and Neonatal Commissioner is being considered urgently through the National Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce.

As an outcome of an Independent Patient Safety Investigation by the National Health Service, the WellBN Practice in Brighton has stopped prescribing hormone medications to children under 18 years old for gender dysphoria, outside of NHS clinical commissioning policy.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) suspended WellBN’s ‘Good’ rating while concerns with the practice were investigated further. Suspension of ratings does not mean closure of the practice or suspension of the service’s registration with the CQC.

As part of their ongoing inspection, the CQC is also reviewing historical information relating to prescribing practices at the service. This may involve the use of the CQC’s legal powers to investigate incidents where individuals may have experienced harm or been put at risk of harm within health and social care services in England.

Additionally, a number of former and current clinicians at WellBN have been referred for the purpose of further professional investigation, both through their independent professional regulator and/or through the NHS professional standards mechanism.

The NHS has analysed prescribing data relating to hormone treatments given to children under 18 years old among general practices across England and it found that the WellBN Practice was a clear outlier.

It is important that all women and babies receive safe, equitable, and compassionate care, regardless of where they live. All local areas have equity and equality action plans in place, which set out tailored interventions that tackle inequalities for women and babies from ethnic backgrounds and those living in the most deprived areas.

NHS England receives annual national surveillance reports from Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK (MBRRACE-UK), which provide comprehensive assessments of maternal safety outcomes, including regional variation, inequalities, and risk factors associated with poor outcomes. These reports identify areas where disparities exist and inform national and regional improvement priorities.

Findings and recommendations from the reports are shared with accountable National Health Service leadership teams, which are responsible for implementing targeted improvement actions to reduce unwarranted variation, address inequalities, and improve the safety and quality of maternity care across England.

The timeframe of the independent maternity reviews of Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust will be determined by the Terms of Reference.

The full Terms of Reference will be developed and finalised with the Chair, Donna Ockenden, and families in the coming months. Families are helping shape the scope of these reviews, ensuring every person who experienced harm gets the answers they deserve, driving lasting improvements to maternity safety.

We recognise that student midwives are a vital part of our future workforce, providing essential care and support to women, babies and families across maternity services.

Temporary posts give providers flexibility to recruit ahead of turnover, so newly qualified midwives can start work quickly rather than waiting for vacancies. This period will be used to stabilise services and support newly qualified midwives into practice, with the expectation they move into permanent roles as vacancies arise through normal turnover.

Neither the Department nor NHS England holds centrally validated information on the number of secure beds in each region.

In line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance, the current version of the Saving Babies' Lives Care Bundle, published April 2025, recommends that carbon monoxide testing is offered for all women at antenatal booking and the 36-week antenatal appointment, and additionally at every antenatal appointment for the groups identified in NICE Guideline 209, which includes women who "tested with 4 parts per million or above at the first antenatal appointment".

As part of the routine review process for each update to the Care Bundle, relevant national guidance, including NICE and Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists guidelines, alongside evidence and best practice are assessed to determine whether any changes are required. Scoping has not yet begun on a new version of the Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle.

No such guidance has been issued.

It is unacceptable that women can wait a long time for an endometriosis diagnosis and we are committed to improving waiting times for diagnosis and treatment so patients can get the care they need sooner.

The Renewed Women’s Health Strategy commits to speeding up diagnosis and access to treatment for conditions including endometriosis.

Clinical pathways for heavy periods and pelvic pain, which can be a sign of endometriosis, will be redesigned to reduce repeat appointments, unnecessary referrals, and long waits.

This will create roadmaps for health systems to use and adapt for local needs that will enable women to move more quickly through the system and reach the level of care they need with fewer appointments. These redesigned pathways will also help systems to transform services, plan their workforce, and consider where capacity is most usefully deployed so that hospitals can provide the specialist care they are designed to, and move more care, where appropriate, into the community.

Women with endometriosis will benefit from single points of access for gynaecology referrals and a shift away from hospital-only care towards neighbourhood and community settings.

As part of the Renewed Women's Health Strategy, we also committed to publishing an equity good practice guide to enable integrated care boards (ICBs) to better understand and reduce inequalities in heavy periods. Heavy periods are a key symptom of endometriosis, and this will enable ICBs to take targeted action to improve care and reduce disparities for women experiencing heavy periods and related gynaecological conditions.

Menstrual problems, including those caused by endometriosis, are prioritised as one of the first pathways to be delivered through community-based services and the new virtual hospital, NHS Online.

NHS Online will give people on certain pathways the choice of getting the specialist care they need from their home. It will connect patients with clinicians across the country through secure, online appointments accessed through the NHS App.

NHS Online will help to reduce patient waiting times, delivering the equivalent of up to 8.5 million appointments and assessments in its first three years, four times more than an average trust, while enhancing patient choice and control over their care.

Vaccinations will primarily be offered in community pharmacies, providing flexibility for the mobile student population who may move to a new area between doses.

To support access in all areas, NHS England regional teams will also be supported to commission appropriate supplementary providers in their area where needed to ensure that everyone who is eligible can get vaccinated.

The first dose will be available until 31 December 2026 and the second dose until 31 March 2027. The appointment window remains open beyond summer to allow for as many of those eligible as possible to get vaccinated, but the strong recommendation is to have the vaccine in July and August.

In developing vaccination policy, the Department has due regard to its duties under the Public Sector Equality Duty. Consideration of equality and health inequalities impacts are undertaken as part of the development, implementation, and review of vaccination programmes. In developing the policy on this urgent meningococcal B (MenB) vaccination programme, the Department had due regard to its duties under the Public Sector Equality Duty.

The operational delivery of vaccinations is led by NHS England, including the providers commissioned to deliver the vaccination programme. An Equality Health Impact Assessment is being developed by NHS England to support in the identification and mitigation of inequalities in access and outcomes as relates to the rollout of this MenB programme.

Getting two doses of the meningitis B vaccine before the autumn term is one of the most important things young people can do to protect themselves from meningitis B disease.

The UK Health Security Agency has produced a wide range of materials to inform young people of the offer and to support informed consent. We are working closely with cross-Government colleagues and partners, including those in the university and further education sectors, and with stakeholders to ensure that information on eligibility and access to vaccination in each of the four nations is available to all eligible young people, including those living in rural areas, ahead of the autumn term. Information will be shared via direct communications, social media platforms, and other routes.

NHS England will continually monitor community pharmacy sign up and will work with regional teams to consider supplementary offers where geographical gaps are identified.

Our 10-Year Health Plan for England sets out a reimagined service designed to tackle health inequalities in both access and outcomes. This includes tackling conditions where there are the greatest disparities for ethnic groups.

We remain committed to reducing the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest, an ambitious commitment that shows the Government is serious about tackling health inequalities and addressing the social determinants of health. Indicators to monitor progress in health inequalities are measured in key data outcomes, such as the life expectancy estimates for England and sub-national areas, produced by the Office for National Statistics.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed gaps in available data, including the quality of ethnicity data held to support the identification of health inequalities among ethnic minority communities.

There are a number of barriers to the consistent and accurate collection and recording of ethnicity data in the National Health Service, such as outdated ethnicity codes as a result of the need for the NHS to migrate from the 2001 to the 2021 Census ethnicity classification. There is also a need for a single point of collection of ethnicity data which multiple systems could speak to. Ethnicity needing to be recorded multiple times currently increases the likelihood of inconsistencies between data collected in different settings, as does inconsistency in how staff approach ethnicity data collection and recording, and there are particular challenges in some settings such as the ambulance services and accident and emergency. These inconsistencies can mean some individual patients having multiple ethnic codes from different settings and contacts with the healthcare system. In addition, the overuse of ‘Not stated’ and ‘Unknown’ ethnicity codes leads to gaps in data, undermining robust analysis of healthcare inequalities between ethnic groups

In October 2025, NHS England published an Ethnicity Recording Improvement Plan, which includes actions to address structural and practical barriers to high quality ethnicity recording at a system level, as well as guidance to support providers and systems to implement best practice ethnicity recording, including training staff and supporting patients to understand why and how this data is used. Data quality is a feature of the NHS Oversight Framework 2026/27 via inclusion of the data quality maturity index, meaning that NHS trusts are scored on the quality of their data overall. The completeness of their ethnicity data forms part of this overall index. Work is also underway within to address some of the barriers to high quality ethnicity data, including work to support the NHS’s migration to modernised ethnicity codes.

More generally, Department will look to improve data quality and timeliness, and fill data gaps around equalities in partnership with stakeholders.

NHS England has a published service specification that covers the provision of surgical interventions for individuals on the National Health Service pathway of care for the treatment of gender dysphoria. Providers are expected to follow this service specification.

The NHS Health Check (NHS HC) programme is commissioned by local authorities who are responsible for offering 100% of their eligible resident population a check every five years.

The Government's Public Health Grant to local authorities is used to enable the programme's provision and allows local authorities to ensure that delivery of the NHS HC is aligned with local public health services and fits their local population.

The programme's Best Practice Guidance provides commissioners and their providers with information on how to deliver the programme effectively, and how to adopt a proportionate universalist approach to ensure that checks are delivered in a way that prioritises resources and effort towards engaging people at higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

Department officials are considering options to improve the NHS HC programme.

The NHS Health Check Online (NHSHC-O) is in the private Beta testing phase and is being piloted in 11 local authorities across England. As part of the NHSHC-O, users receive a self-sampling capillary blood testing kit, delivered to their home, to measure cholesterol, and, if appropriate, HbA1c. Samples are then sent to a United Kingdom Accreditation Service accredited laboratory for assessment.

All results from the NHSHC-O are automatically written back into the patient's electronic health record. General practices are notified if a patient's results indicate that further assessment is necessary and, if required, undertake further clinical investigation and treatment where appropriate, in line with existing clinical pathways.

Neither the Department nor NHS England hold this information.

The National Cancer Plan sets out a modern cancer care model that is more personalised, coordinated and delivered closer to home where clinically appropriate. The Neighbourhood Health Service will support delivery of this model by bringing elements of cancer care into community settings such as neighbourhood health centres, alongside other local services.

Multi-disciplinary neighbourhood teams will coordinate care around the individual, including those with blood cancer, helping to reduce fragmentation between services, improve integration across health and community provision, and better align care with people’s day-to-day lives.

Furthermore, in 2025, we published Standardising Community Services which provides an overview of community health services. Further guidance was published in February 2026, providing more detailed descriptions of the core components of community health services for integrated care boards, and a copy of this is attached.

Clear definitions of core community health services will enable systems to measure demand, capacity and workforce, and streamline services to reduce unwarranted variations, including for cancer care. This guidance will also support commissioners in making investment choices when designing neighbourhood health services and in moving more care into the community.

We need to ensure that staff across the health and care system are supported to work as effectively as possible for their populations, in joined-up, integrated neighbourhood teams. That is why neighbourhood health is designed to support them, by bringing professionals together in new neighbourhood teams to cut duplication and use digital tools to make their day-to-day work more efficient so they can focus on patient care.

The National Cancer Plan sets out a modern cancer care model that is more personalised, coordinated and delivered closer to home where clinically appropriate. The Neighbourhood Health Service will support delivery of this model by bringing elements of cancer care into community settings such as neighbourhood health centres, alongside other local services.

Multi-disciplinary neighbourhood teams will coordinate care around the individual, including those with blood cancer, helping to reduce fragmentation between services, improve integration across health and community provision, and better align care with people’s day-to-day lives.

Furthermore, in 2025, we published Standardising Community Services which provides an overview of community health services. Further guidance was published in February 2026, providing more detailed descriptions of the core components of community health services for integrated care boards, and a copy of this is attached.

Clear definitions of core community health services will enable systems to measure demand, capacity and workforce, and streamline services to reduce unwarranted variations, including for cancer care. This guidance will also support commissioners in making investment choices when designing neighbourhood health services and in moving more care into the community.

We need to ensure that staff across the health and care system are supported to work as effectively as possible for their populations, in joined-up, integrated neighbourhood teams. That is why neighbourhood health is designed to support them, by bringing professionals together in new neighbourhood teams to cut duplication and use digital tools to make their day-to-day work more efficient so they can focus on patient care.