Patient-Led Assessments of the Care Environment (PLACE), 2025

The number of assessments of conducted and completed in 2025 is shown in the table below.

PLACE collection is voluntary but is usually completed by the vast majority of NHS Trusts with eligible sites; in 2025, 860 sites from 182 trusts completed valid PLACE assessments. The true number of independent/private healthcare providers eligible for the collection is unknown, but 208 sites from 46 organisations provided PLACE data in 2025 (based on EFM organisation type, rather than self-declared PLACE organisation type).

For single site organisations without inpatient facilities, we no longer provide an organisation score (as the assessment no longer includes the number of beds, and organisation scores are weighted by these).

From 2019, organisation scores and national and commissioning region average scores are weighted by the number of inpatient beds; any sites which are without inpatient facilities are not included in these average calculations. This differs from previous PLACE calculations, where these sites were given a default value of 1 bed, which was used in the calculations of average scores. 

A comprehensive review was made of the PLACE programme following the 2018 collection. The 2019 established a new baseline, and scores are not comparable with any previously published. 

Since 2023 we have enforced patient assessor minimums to provide more consistent reporting. These results should not be compared with those from 2022 where the programme was heavily impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic (so we received fewer completed assessments), further reduced by the need to enforce minimum patient assessor numbers.

For comparability of earlier PLACE results (2019 and before), please see the Data Quality Report published alongside the 2019 results, which is available here:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/patient-led-assessments-of-the-care-environment-place