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Healthy Start Scheme

Question for Department of Health and Social Care

UIN 201335, tabled on 13 October 2023

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of recipients of Healthy Start paper vouchers have not re-enrolled via the online registration system.

This answer is the replacement for a previous holding answer.

Answered on

20 October 2023

The NHS Business Services Authority estimate that as of 15 October 2023 there were 20,500 households which previously were in receipt of paper vouchers which have not successfully applied to the NHS Healthy Start prepaid card scheme. This is around 7% of the 286,791 households that were in receipt of paper vouchers in August 2021. The 7% figure includes households that are no longer eligible to apply for the Healthy Start scheme.

In September 2023, uptake for the Healthy Start scheme was 68.2%. Uptake of the fully digitised scheme is higher than the previous paper voucher scheme. Healthy Start now supports around 367,000 beneficiaries.

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