Nicholas Soames: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the average waiting time for a referral for (a) physiotherapy and (b) speech therapy was (i) in Mid Sussex constituency, (ii) in the south-east and (iii) nationally in the latest period for which figures are available. [82442]

Mr Simon Burns MP; Minister of State: The information requested is currently not collected centrally. The ‘Allied Health Professional (AHP) Referral to Treatment (RTT) Guide’, published in 2010, sets out a framework of rules for clock starts and clock stops to measure waiting times for patients when accessing national health service AHP services including physiotherapy and speech and language therapy.

Nationally, AHP RTT data collection and reporting was due to be mandated from April 2011, however, as part of the public health spending reviews, the implementation date for collecting data is being reviewed. In the meantime, it is expected that local national health service organisations will collect these data locally to help them identify where service improvement is most needed.

Work between the Department and the NHS Information Centre is in place to ensure the development and mandate of data sets by which the AHP RTT data collected locally can be flowed to a central source for national reporting.

The ‘Allied Health Professional Referral to Treatment Guide’ has been placed in the Library and is available here