NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care have published the new Urgent and Emergency Care Plan 2025/26.
Responding to the plan, Dr Lade Smith CBE, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said:
“We welcome the UK Government’s focus on improving urgent and emergency care for the increasing number of people with mental illness, who are much more likely to wait for over 12 hours in A&E than other patients.
“Additional mental health crisis centres have the potential to provide a more therapeutic environment for people in mental health crisis but to be truly effective, they need to be based within general emergency departments so that physical health needs don’t go unmet and waiting times in England can be reduced.
“Too many people with mental illness are also sent far from home for care due to a lack of available beds locally. We welcome the reaffirmed commitment to ending this awful practice, which leaves extremely vulnerable people feeling isolated and hinders their recovery.
“People who receive care locally as soon as they need it are much less likely to develop a more serious illness. The DHSC Neighbourhood Health Hub model mirrors the Community Mental Health Framework, and can play a key role in delivering targeted treatment as soon as symptoms arise, and also facilitate partnership working with the voluntary sector to address people’s housing, financial and social needs.
“Integrated Care Boards across England are being given more autonomy, and we hope this leads to greater collaboration between primary care and acute inpatient services to prevent people from needing emergency treatment to begin with.
“Plans to publish more data are also welcome as this will help to identify where improvements are needed, and to what scale.
“This is positive news, and the College is ready to support the UK Government’s efforts to improve emergency care. It is vital that DHSC and NHS England take an evidence-based, clinically-led approach which addresses the mental illness needs of each area’s population.”
For further information, please contact:
- Email: press@rcpsych.ac.uk
- Twitter: @rcpsych
- Out-of-hours contact number: 07860 755896
