To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people requested social care services but died before receiving any such service in each year since 2010.
Answered on
17 December 2018
NHS Digital statistics record that, in 2017/18, there were 32,115 new requests for services from applicants who were deceased before they received the package. This data records requests for care, not individual deaths as requested, and represents approximately 1.7% of total new requests.
This first mandatory collection of this date was in 2017/18, with complete data for years prior to 2017/18 not available. The data was first collected in 2016/17 via a voluntary collection from local authorities where less than a quarter of local authorities submitted a response. This means that the 2016/17 and 2017/18 figures are not directly comparable; in 2016/17 the voluntary returns from local authorities who recorded 6,580 new requests for services from applicants who were deceased before they received the package, based on returns from 36 out of 152 local authorities.