Publication, Part of Autism Waiting Time Statistics
Autism Statistics, April 2025 to March 2026
Experimental statistics, Official statistics in development
Psych UK Limited data submissions for March 2026
The Psych UK Limited (DQT) provider has been affected by delays in processing referrals. As a result, the data submitted for March 2026 is incomplete. The number of patients with an open suspected autism referral (ASD16) submitted by Psych UK Limited (DQT) is 14,125 (February 2026) and 560 (March 2026). This has driven a 2.0% decrease at England level from 276,350 (February 2026) to 270,701 (March 2026).
It is expected that Psych UK Limited (DQT) will submit revised March 2026 data prior to the deadline for 2025/26 submission, and this will be reflected in future publications.
Users can gain some understanding of the potential impact using the provider-level measures for Psych UK Limited (DQT) included in this publication.
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The Owl Centre data submission
The Owl Centre (8K891) provider began to flow referrals with a primary reason for referral of suspected autism in December 2025. They made submissions to MHSDS in prior months, but those prior submissions did not contain any such referrals. This has driven a 9.9% increase in the total number of patients with an open referral for suspected autism (ASD16) at national level, from 233,149 in November 2025 to 256,228 in December 2025. The ASD16 metric value for The Owl Centre (8K891) in December 2025 was 18,245.
New referrals (ASD12, ASD12a and ASD12b) for The Owl Centre (8K891) are reported from April 2025 onwards only, as the data for previous financial years has not been refreshed.
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Sub-ICB, ICB and Region breakdowns
In the May 2025 edition of this publication, we issued a notice informing users that we had identified an issue with the sub-ICB, ICB and Region breakdowns affecting all financial years from 2019/20 to 2023/24 inclusive.
This issue meant the figures in the "Unknown" group were much higher than they should have been.
This issue is now almost entirely resolved. There is, however, a minor outstanding issue affecting a limited amount of subnational 2019-20 data.
As a result, metrics ASD16f, ASD16g, ASD16h, ASD16i, ASD16j, ASD16k, ASD25, ASD25a and ASD25b within the ‘AutismStats_Apr2019_Mar2020_Region’ and ‘AutismStats_Apr2019_Mar2020_ICB’ CSV files are currently omitted. All other files contain the full set of metrics across the full time series
NHS England apologises for any inconvenience.
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Summary
These statistics present a group of measures on waiting times for autism spectrum disorder diagnostic pathways, based on the time between a referral for suspected autism and the first care contact associated with that referral.
There are also multiple breakdowns based on the progression and outcomes of those referrals.
Each of these measures contributes to an overall picture of waiting times for diagnostic pathways. The approach is outlined in the methodology section of this publication.
Highlights
Autism assessments for children and adolescents happen in two types of NHS service, child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) services and community paediatric services which undertake neurodevelopmental assessment. Activity in CAMH services is reported alongside adult mental healthcare activity in the Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS) and is included in this report. Activity in community paediatric services is reported through the Community Services Dataset (CSDS). Currently autism assessments are not clearly identifiable in CSDS and so cannot be included at present.
We are exploring developments in the identification of this activity in the CSDS with the intention of including this activity in future reports.
Access the code used to create this report
The code used to create the outputs for this report is available on our NHS Digital GitHub webpage.
Data Quality
Figures should be interpreted with caution as Data Quality issues may be present in the data used to create the measures. Please see the 'Data Quality Comments' available from here which contains details of providers who have reported Data Quality issues.
Key Facts
Referral Waiting Times
In March 2026, there were 270,701 patients with an open referral for suspected autism. Of these, 242,708 (89.7%) had a referral that had been open at least 13 weeks.
First Appointments
In March 2026, 3.7% (9,071) of the patients with an open referral that had been open more than 13 weeks had had a first appointment within the recommended 13 weeks.
Open/Closed Referrals
There were 12,750 new referrals and 13,153 closed referrals in March 2026. This is a decrease of 9.2% for new referrals and an decrease of 0.7% for closed referrals compared to March 2025.
Waiting time from referral to care contact dashboard
Open the interactive dashboard This tool is in Microsoft Power BI which does not fully support all accessibility needs. If you need further assistance, please contact us for help.
Resources
Last edited: 14 May 2026 9:31 am