PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
(26 November 2024)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average waiting time was for a Deprivation of Liberty Safeguard to be processed for standard authorisation per year since 2009.

Asked by:
Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat)

The annual Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) Assessments consist of data collected by NHS Digital from local authorities in England, who are the supervisory bodies for authorising deprivations of liberty for adults in care homes and hospitals. The aim of this publication is to inform users about the aspects of DoLS activity. NHS Digital collects data on the average length of time for all completed DoLS applications. The statutory deadline for a standard authorisation is 21 days, and seven days for an urgent authorisation. This data was not routinely collected prior to 2016/17.

The following table shows the number of granted authorisation of standard applications and the mean average number of days for standard authorisation of Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards applications, each year from 2016/17 to 2023/24:

Year	Number of granted authorisations from standard applications	Mean duration of actual authorisation period in days for standard applications
2016/17	30,865	226
2017/18	51,995	250
2018/19	63,020	264
2019/20	69,895	271
2020/21	75,995	270
2021/22	68,565	269
2022/23	75,065	270
2023/24	80,150	276

Source: data is published by NHS Digital, and is available at the following link:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/mental-capacity-act-2005-deprivation-of-liberty-safeguards-assessments

Answered by:
()

1 January 1970