§ Mr. Andrew TurnerTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what information he has received from the National Care Standards Commission on the number of care home beds in(a) 2002 and (b) 2003. [138892]
§ Dr. LadymanThe National Care Standards Commission (NCSC) noted in their annual report, published in September 2003, that there were 426,600 care places in homes registered in England at 31 March 2003. This figure excludes some local authority homes which had not been registered and therefore is not comparable with data for previous years published by the Department of Health.
Due to operational and technical problems with the NCSC database they have been unable to produce information for 2002.