Government hydration recommendations are depicted in the United Kingdom national food model, the Eatwell Guide, which is available at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-eatwell-guide

The Eatwell Guide recommends that people should aim to drink six to eight cups or glasses of fluid a day, and promotes water, lower fat milks, and sugar-free drinks as healthier drink choices.

The Eatwell Guide principles are communicated through the NHS.UK website and the Government’s social marketing campaigns, Better Health, including Healthier Families and Start for Life. These principles are also included in the national curriculum through a number of subjects including Design and Technology, Science, and Relationships, Sex and Health Education. The Eatwell Guide also underpins catering guidance and standards including for School Food and prisons as well as the Government’s Buying Standards for Food and Catering Services.

We are directly funding UNICEF and the Red Cross to provide vital support for children's health in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including mental health services, medical care, essential supplies, food security, nutrition, clean water, shelter and other humanitarian assistance. For UNICEF specifically, we have provided targeted support for children through a £5.75 million contribution, part of our wider £60 million humanitarian uplift. This is supporting their work to assist over 5,800 children with severe malnourishment. The UK has also supported the United Nations World Food Programme to deliver a new humanitarian land corridor from Jordan into Gaza. 750 tonnes of life-saving food aid arrived in the first delivery in December and there have been numerous deliveries since.

Israel must take steps, working with other partners including the UN and Egypt, to significantly increase the flow of aid into Gaza including allowing prolonged humanitarian pauses, opening more routes into Gaza and restoring and sustaining water, fuel and electricity. We have reiterated the need for Israel to open more crossing points into Gaza, for Nitzana and Kerem Shalom to be open for longer, and for Israel to support the UN to distribute aid effectively across the whole of Gaza. We continue to raise this with Israel at the highest levels.

Government does not record statistics on the impact of lack of public toilets on disabled people or those with specific health conditions. Local councils are empowered by the Public Health Act 1936 to provide public conveniences. We recently announced up to £30.5 million funding to local authorities in England to boost the number of Changing Places toilets for people who cannot use standard accessible toilets. They will be installed in existing buildings and we have made it compulsory for new public buildings to have them.

The Minister for Equalities, Faith, Local Government and Communities made a statement (HCWS172) on 4 July 2022 setting out the Government’s intention to make changes to the Building Regulations to support better privacy, dignity and security for people using toilets outside the home. As part of that work, the department carried out a call for evidence on toilet provision for men and women, which closed in February 2021. We received more than 17,500 responses to the call for evidence and of those, 88% cited important considerations including medical conditions and toilet provision for disabled persons. These concerns were reflected in our more detailed proposals which were set out in a technical consultation on toilet provision in buildings other than dwellings which closed in October 2023. The responses to the technical consultation are now being considered and we intend to amend Building Regulations accordingly in the coming months.

UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has published guidance to the public on how to stay safe in hot weather including the importance of staying hydrated and protecting yourself from the sun. This guidance is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/beat-the-heat-hot-weather-advice/beat-the-heat-staying-safe-in-hot-weather.

UKHSA also produced a Hot Weather communications toolkit. This toolkit is shared with regional communications, cross-government partners, and local government to support consistent and clear messaging on hot weather.

Between November 2017 and March 2019, the NHS England Nursing Directorate delivered two nutrition improvement collaboratives which supported 50 National Health Service provider organisation to deliver improvements in the provision of nutritional care. The overall aims were to:

- Increase the proportion of patients with an accurate nutritional screen;

- Increase the proportion of patients receiving appropriate nutritional interventions; and

- Introduce or increase the use of quality improvement tools and techniques.

The organisations involved in the collaboratives had multi-professional teams including nurses, Allied Health Professionals and caterers. A range of interventions were introduced by the organisations to support improvements including education, training of staff, reviewing availability of equipment to support nutritional screening and assessment. Governance structures were implemented to enable reporting of nutritional care to the trust board. To further build on this a Nutrition Quality Improvement Toolkit is also being developed.

In 2014 the Government updated the requirements of regulation with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to provide greater clarity about how the nutritional and hydration needs should be met. The new requirements are set out in Regulation 14 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, which came into force on 1 April 2015. The CQC can prosecute for a breach of this regulation if a failure to meet the regulation results in avoidable harm to a person using the service, or a person using the service is exposed to significant risk of harm.

This information is not collected or held centrally. However, all providers of regulated activities, including hospitals, are required by law to have policies in place that protect people from the risks of dehydration. It is for health and social care providers to develop local hydration policies and there are a number of best practice resources available to help providers to do this.

The information requested is not collected centrally. However, tables showing a count of finished admission episodes where there was a named primary or secondary diagnosis of dehydration by gender and age for the years 2006-07 to 2010-11 have been placed in the Library. Please note that these are not a count of patients as a person may have been admitted to hospital more than once in the year.