Skip to main content

Publication, Part of

Statistics on people with a learning disability and autistic people in mental health hospitals, AT: April 2026, MHSDS: March 2026

Official statistics, Experimental statistics

Publication Date:
21 May 2026
Geographic Coverage:
England
Geographical Granularity:
Regions, Clinical Commissioning Groups, NHS Trusts
Date Range:
01 Apr 2026 to 30 Apr 2026

Current Chapter

Statistics on people with a learning disability and autistic people in mental health hospitals, AT: April 2026, MHSDS: March 2026

View all

Next Chapter

About the Assuring Transformation dataset

Methodological Changes to the publication

Two changes have been made to the methodology for measures within the AT data tables, with effect from the
publication of April 2026 data.

  • Patient total length of stay will now be calculated by combining contiguous episodes of care into spells. 
    All values for hospital start date and earliest admission date in episodes within the spell will be considered
    to establish the original admission date.
  • Where patient records indicate that an episode of care ended on the last day of the month
    and a new one started the next day, but the data indicates that it was a continuous stay in hospital,
    the patient will now be counted as in hospital at the end of the month. 

These changes will mean a more accurate view of the number of patients in hospital, and the total length of stay.
Full details of the change are published here 

Announcement of methodological change to the statistics on people with a learning disability and autistic people in
mental health hospitals publication

  

 

21 May 2026 09:30 AM

New tables within Assuring Transformation data tables

NHS England have added 3 new sub-national tables to the AT data tables with effect from the April 2026 data.
These tables present data at Integrated Care Board (ICB), Region and England level:

 - number and rate of admissions (for under 18s and adults)
 - number and proportion of patients in hospital with the longest lengths of stay
 - number of patients, by age group and patient category, and inpatient rate per million population

21 May 2026 09:30 AM

Integrated Care Board (ICB) changes from 1 April 2026

From 1 April 2026, 6 new Integrated care boards (ICBs) were established and the boundary of an existing ICB was widened
through the abolition of 12 existing ICBs.
Data in the AT tables is presented for the new ICBs.  One existing ICB and Sub ICB Location (SICBL) (Frimley) was divided,
with parts of its geographical footprint forming part of 3 different ICBs. As the divided SICBL cannot be mapped forward,
the comparability of time series for these 3 ICBs is affected - these are noted in the data tables.

Further details of ICB changes are available at NHS England » Integrated care in your area

 

21 May 2026 09:30 AM

Page contents

Summary

Latest monthly statistics on people with a learning disability and autistic people in inpatient services from the Assuring Transformation (AT) collection and Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS).

Data on inpatients with learning disabilities and/or autism are being collected both within the AT collection and MHSDS. There are differences in the inpatient figures between the AT and MHSDS data sets and work has been ongoing to better understand these. LDA data from MHSDS are experimental statistics, however, while impacts from the cyber incident are still present they will be considered to be management information.

From April 2024, LDA MHSDS data has been collected under MHSDS version 6.

Data in the tables are presented by the current organisational structures. Old organisational structures have been mapped to new structures in any time series.

Key Facts

There were 2,105 people with a learning disability and autistic people in inpatient services at the end of April 2026

1,030 (49%) of these have had a total length of stay* over 2 years

*Total length of stay is the time since the date of first admission to any hospital as part of this continuous period of inpatient care.

(Source: AT dataset)

115 were admitted or transferred into hospital

90 were admissions, of which 65 were first admissions in a year, 25 were readmissions within a year of the previous discharge and 25 were transfers from other hospitals

(Source: AT dataset)

180 were discharged or transferred out of hospital

135 (75%) of these were discharged back into the community

(Source: AT dataset)

There were 3,930 people with a learning disability and autistic people in hospital at the end of March 2026

(Source: MHSDS)

1,300 were admitted to hospital during March 2026

(Source: MHSDS)

1,460 were discharged from hospital during March 2026

(Source: MHSDS)

Last edited: 21 May 2026 9:31 am