Publication, Part of Statistics on people with a learning disability and autistic people in mental health hospitals
Learning Disability Services Monthly Statistics, AT: December 2024, MHSDS: November 2024
Official statistics, Experimental statistics
Error in adult inpatient rates in Assuring Transformation (AT) Table 5.2
We have identified an error affecting the adult inpatient rates presented in Assuring Transformation (AT) Table 5.2. The error affects each AT reporting period from October 2023 to June 2025 inclusive.
The error arose due to the rate calculation having been performed using ONS mid-year population estimates from the year 2020 rather than 2017. The adult inpatient numbers in this table are unaffected by the error.
The affected rates data has now been redacted from Table 5.2 in each of the affected publications.
Corrected rates for March 2024 and March 2025, the ‘end-of-year’ months, have been published on Supplementary Information here.
NHS England apologises for any inconvenience caused.
8 October 2025 17:45 PM
Change to Submission Window used for MHSDS Restrictive Intervention Performance Reporting
From October 2024 activity onwards, MHSDS Restrictive Interventions Performance data is reported from submissions made in the month following the activity period, rather than the second month.
As such, there will no longer be a time lag in the reporting of MHSDS Restrictive Interventions data (Tables 15-18) within this publication compared with all other MHSDS data.
16 January 2025 09:30 AM
Changes to AT dataset from April 2024
Significant changes were made to the AT dataset (v4.0) from 2 April 2024. Some of these changes impacted on the breakdowns available in the AT data tables and these have been footnoted where relevant.
Full details about these changes can be found within the current release of the AT information standard.
16 January 2025 09:30 AM
Summary findings from MHSDS
MHSDS main findings - November 2024
At the end of November 2024 (based on hospital spells data):
- There were 3,755 people with learning disabilities and/ or autistic spectrum disorders (LDA) in hospital.
- There were 1,245 admissions and 1,415 discharges. 78% of these were discharged back into the community.
- There were 419,905 referrals¹ for people with LDA.
Of these inpatients:
- 1,175 (31%) had been in hospital for over 2 years.
- There are 1,285 inpatients with a planned discharge date (34%).
- 315 (8%) had a delayed discharge.
- The largest proportion (27%) were aged between 25-34 (1,025).
- The lowest proportion (5%) were aged under 18 (195).
- 67% were male (2,535) and 32% were female (1,190).
Findings based on ward stays data:
- There were 3,705 ward stays reported for the end of the period.
- The largest group of inpatients were in an adult mental health ward (2,075, 56%), followed by a learning disabilities ward (835, 22%).
- 2,190 (59%) were in a non-secure setting². 1,290 (35%) were in a secure setting.
- 490 (13%) travelled over 50km from home to get to the hospital for care or treatment.
- 720 patients were restrained at least once.
1 These include all open referrals without a hospital spell associated with them if the inpatient did not need to stay overnight in hospital.
2 Non-secure wards include inpatients in general wards. Secure wards include patients in low, medium and high secure ward settings.
Last edited: 8 October 2025 5:49 pm