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Publication, Part of

Psychological Therapies: reports on the use of IAPT services, England, December 2022 Final including a report on the IAPT Employment Advisers pilot and Quarter 3 2022-23 data

Official statistics, Experimental statistics

Page contents

Waiting Times

One of the stated targets of the IAPT programme is that for referrals finishing a course of treatment in the month, 75% access services within 6 weeks, and 95% within 18 weeks⁵. These are based on the waiting time between the referral date and the first attended treatment appointment.

89.7% of referrals waited less than 6 weeks to access IAPT services.

Calculating Waiting Times

In December 2022, this calculation is performed as follows: 

(Count_AccessingServices6WeeksFinishedCourseTreatment / Count_FinishedCourseTreatment) * 100

(43,711 / 48,726) * 100 = 89.7%

Sub-national waiting times rates are published in the Monthly Activity Data File as columns ‘Percentage_AccessingServices6WeeksFinishedCourseTreatment’ and ‘Percentage_AccessingServices18WeeksFinishedCourseTreatment’.


The chart below shows that, nationally, waiting times measures have consistently been above the target, particularly the proportion seen within 6 weeks.


For an explanation of the terms used and further information about how measures are calculated in IAPT see the 'Guide to IAPT data and publications' at  Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) data set reports - NHS Digital.

⁵ See p16-17 of The Mandate: A mandate from the Government to NHS England: April 2015 to March 2016, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/386221/NHS_England_Mandate.pdf



Last edited: 8 May 2024 1:09 pm