§ Mr. BurstowTo ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to his answer of 5 December 2002,Official Report, column 975W, on care home registrations, for what reasons information on the (a) average length of time and (b) number of care home applications to be registered and processed by the NCSC is not available; and when he expects this information to be available. [86922]
§ Jacqui SmithThe National Care Standards Commission (NCSC) does not currently have the full information requested. This is because it requires inspections of services to have been carried out and recorded on the NCSC database. Not all services have yet been inspected and so are not included on the database.
We expect the NCSC to be able to provide full information by the end of March 2003, when it will have finished its inspection programme.