Wheelchairs: Health Services
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking with Cabinet colleagues to improve support for people requiring wheelchairs.
Answered by Preet Kaur Gill
On 21 July 2025, the Minister for Social Security and Disability announced our plans to develop and publish a Government Plan for Disability. The Department is working with the Cabinet Office Disability Unit to support the development of the Plan for Disability and towards our shared goal of breaking down barriers to opportunity.
I have been the lead minister for disability for the Department since May 2026. Lead ministers for disability represent the interests of disabled people, and champion disability inclusion and accessibility across each Government department.
Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for commissioning services to meet the health needs of their local population, including wheelchair services. NHS England has developed policy, guidance, and legislation to support ICBs to commission effective, efficient, and personalised wheelchair services and to reduce delays in people receiving timely intervention and wheelchair equipment.
This includes publishing a Wheelchair Quality Framework on 9 April 2025, which sets out quality standards and statutory requirements for ICBs. The framework is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/wheelchair-quality-framework/
NHS England also introduced personal wheelchair budgets, including legal rights, in 2019, providing a clear framework for ICBs to commission personalised wheelchair services which are outcomes focused and integrated. Personal wheelchair budgets give people greater choice over the wheelchair provided.
Since July 2015, NHS England has collected quarterly data from ICBs on wheelchair provision, including waiting times, to enable targeted action if improvement is required. The latest figures from Quarter two of the 2025/26 National Wheelchair Data Collection showed 84% of adults and 78% of children received their equipment within 18 weeks. Further information is available at the following link:
The Medium-Term Planning Framework sets a requirement for all providers and ICBs to actively manage long waits for community health services, reducing the proportion of all waits over 18 weeks. This will be monitored via the NHS’s usual regional and national assurance processes.
NHS England is rolling out a Reasonable Adjustment Digital Flag which enables the recording of key information about a disabled patient or client and the reasonable adjustments to care and treatment that they need, to ensure support can be tailored appropriately and equitably.
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