Mentally Ill: Health Services

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what recent estimate he has made of the operational cost per patient per year of a (a) low, (b) medium and (c) high security mental health unit. (300798)

I have been asked to reply.

The latest figures for the cost per patient per year in a high secure hospital for 2009-10 is £291,780 (figures from the service level agreement with the hospitals). This is the average cost per annum for all high secure services except for patients with dangerous and severe personality disorder.

The latest figures for costs for patients in medium and low secure units are the 2007-08 NHS reference costs. For 2007-08, the national average cost per patient per year in a medium secure unit was £171,915 (based on cost per patient per bed day of £471). For the same period, the national average cost per patient per year for low secure mental health units was £142,715 (based on cost per patient per bed day of £391).

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many patient places in (a) low, (b) medium and (c) high security mental health units were vacant at 1 June 2009. (300800)

I have been asked to reply.

At 1 June 2009 there were a total of 771 commissioned patient beds in high secure units (excluding dangerous and severe personality disorder services). On that date, there were 691 inpatients. In addition, there were 55 high secure patients on trial leave to other secure services.

Figures are not available for vacancies broken down by low and medium secure units. Information is available on the average daily number of mental health and learning disability beds in national health service secure units, and this is contained in the following table.