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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Methodology
Analytical approach
There is one main approach to autism waiting time statistics published here, contributing to an overall picture of the experience of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnostic pathways.
The analysis takes the latest record of all referrals where the reason for the referral is suspected autism. For each month in the reporting period, we look at whether the referral was new, open at any point or closed in the month.
Waiting time to care contact approach
For waiting times, we use the referrals for suspected autism which were open within the month. We then look at the date of the first attended care contact related to those referrals if one has occurred. The waiting time taken here is the time from initial referral to the first care contact.
More detailed descriptions of the analysis undertaken can be found on the construction page of this publication, found here.
These statistics are based on the information collected from the Mental Health Services Dataset. Further detail on the information captured within the Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS) is available here.
Access the code used to create this report
From September 2023, the code used to create the outputs for this report is available on our NHS Digital GitHub webpage.
Revised approach to production of data for completed financial years
Up to and including the August 2025 publication, csv outputs were recreated in respect of all completed financial years, as well as for the financial year currently in progress, using the latest available multiple submission window model (MSWM) data submitted to MHSDS.
As of the November 2025 publication onwards, the csv outputs in respect of completed financial years will not be recreated. The latest available MSWM data from MHSDS will be used to create csv files in respect of the financial year currently in progress only.
This aligns with the production processes for the main MHSDS monthly publication.
It may occasionally be necessary to make exceptions to this however. For example, in the November 2025 publication, the 2022-23 has been refreshed to resolve an outstanding issue relating to high levels of unknowns within sub-national data.
Last edited: 14 May 2026 9:31 am