Publication, Part of Statistics on people with a learning disability and autistic people in mental health hospitals
Statistics on people with a learning disability and autistic people in mental health hospitals, AT: November 2025, MHSDS: October 2025
Official statistics, Experimental statistics
Issue with legal status breakdowns in historical publications
Please note that an issue has been identified within the legal status breakdown within tables 2.3, 4.1 and 4.2. These breakdowns relate to whether the patient was detained under the Mental Health Act, Mental Capacity Act or other acts.
Impact
NHS England has completed an impact assessment which showed that previously the number of patients who were subject to the MHA was being overreported by 1 and 2% of total patients. In the most recent 12 months this was closer to 1% - the median across all time periods reported was 1.1% and 25 patients.
Most of these patients were detained under the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) and other acts but were reported as MHA Other. Within the specific parts of the MHA, a small number of patients were reported under MHA Other but should have been reported under Part II, correcting the MHA Part II figures has largely not made a difference to the rounded figures. All figures for Part III with and without restrictions were reported correctly.
Historical Publication
This issue has been resolved in time for the May-26 publication but impacts historical publications using data from the Assuring Transformation dataset.
NHS England will not republish historical files with updated data but caution is advised in using these breakdowns and users should use the publications from the May-26 publication onwards for correct counts of patients detained under specific sections of the MHA. Statistics on people with a learning disability and autistic people in mental health hospitals, AT: May 2026, MHSDS: April 2026 - NHS England Digital
NHS England apologises for any inconvenience caused.
22 June 2026 10:12 AM
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.
From 1 July 2022, Integrated Care Boards were established within Integrated Care Systems and replaced Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs). Clinical Commissioning Groups have been replaced by sub-Integrated Care Boards. Data for the AT collection is now submitted by sub-Integrated Care Boards. This has resulted in some renaming within tables and the inclusion of a new Table 5.1b with a patient breakdown by submitting organisation. Patients by originating organisation and commissioning type are still available in Table 5.1a. Data in the tables are now presented by the current organisational structures. Old organisational structures have been mapped to new structures in any time series.
Key Facts
There were 2,040 people with a learning disability and autistic people in inpatient services at the end of November 2025
1,020 (50%) of these have had a total length of stay* over 2 years
120 were admitted to hospital
75 were first admissions in a year, 20 were readmissions within a year of the previous discharge, and 20 were transfers from other hospitals
175 were discharged from hospital
145 (83%) of these were discharged back into the community
There were 3,975 people with a learning disability and autistic people in hospital at the end of October 2025
1,495 were admitted to hospital during October 2025
1,575 were discharged from hospital during October 2025
Data Sets
Resources
Last edited: 22 June 2026 10:12 am