Female Genital Mutilation, Annual Report - April 2025 to March 2026

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) refers to procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. FGM has been illegal in the United Kingdom (UK) since 1985, with the law being strengthened in 2003 to prevent girls travelling from the UK and undergoing FGM abroad.

The FGM Enhanced Dataset (FGMED) supports the Department of Health and Social Care’s FGM Prevention Programme by presenting a national picture of the prevalence of FGM in the NHS in England. Data is collected by healthcare providers in England, including acute hospitals, mental health services and GP practices.

This annual report begins to implement the findings of the 2024 consultation and focuses on attendances between April 2025 and March 2026 and includes some further information on attendances between April 2016 and March 2026. Additional analyses and breakdowns by Local Authority, NHS Trust, Sub Integrated Care Boards (Sub-ICBs), and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) are provided on the publication web page.

The Data Quality Statement accompanying this report provides further information on the publication and data. The Information Satndards Notice (DAPB2026) for the dataset provides further information on the collection.

Organisations were requested to ensure all data for the period April 2025 to March 2026 was complete in the collection system following a short period allowed to correct data quality issues by the end of August 2026. The collection system allows updates to historic information, but this has no impact on previously published data.

Between April 2025 and March 2026, 98 NHS trusts and 72 GP practices submitted one or more FGM attendance records. Since the collection began in April 2015 – FGM attendance records have been submitted from 150 NHS trusts and 330 GP practices. It is mandatory for acute hospital providers, mental health providers and GP practices to submit to the FGMED DAPB2026 Information Standards Notice.

1. Individuals refers to all patients in the reporting period where FGM was identified or a procedure for FGM was undertaken. Each patient is only counted once no matter how many attendances they had during the reporting period.
2. Total Attendances refers to all attendances in the reporting period where FGM was identified or a procedure for FGM was undertaken. Women and girls may have one or more attendances in the reporting period. This category includes both newly recorded and previously identified women and girls.
3. Newly Recorded refers to an individual’s first appearance in the FGM dataset. An individual will only appear once in newly recorded no matter how many attendances they have. Newly recorded does not necessarily mean that the attendance is the woman or girl’s first attendance for FGM

The data is suppressed to minimise the risk of individuals being identified.

• All counts of people or attendance are rounded, including national totals. Numbers between 1-7 are rounded to 5 and all other numbers are rounded to the nearest 5.
• Zeroes are shown unsuppressed.
• Percentages are calculated using rounded numbers. This can lead to misleading figures when dealing with small numbers so where the denominator is less than 20, the percentage is suppressed.
• Other calculations, such as averages, are rounded to the nearest whole number.