Publication, Part of Autism Waiting Time Statistics
Autism Statistics, April 2024 to March 2025
Experimental statistics, Official statistics in development
Sub-ICB, ICB and Region breakdowns
We have identified an issue with the sub-ICB, ICB and Region breakdowns affecting all financial years up to and including April 2023 to March 2024. This issue means the figures in the "Unknown" group are much higher than they should be.
All affected csv files have been removed from this publication whilst we investigate the issue.
Sub-ICB, ICB and Region breakdowns are available for April 2024 to March 2025.
NHS England apologises for any inconvenience.
15 May 2025 09:30 AM
Psych UK Limited data submission February 2025
The Psych UK Limited (DQT) provider has submitted a single data submission for February 2025, this has led to a peak in the number of open referrals for patients of all ages (ASD16, ASD16a and data quality metric ASD11) and for patients aged 18 years and over (ASD16d, ASD16e and data quality metric ASD11b) at England level. There is then a following drop in March 2025 as no data has been submitted in this month for this provider. Our methodology to calculate the number of open referrals each month relies on a record for each referral being flowed in the month.
The majority of the other metrics, including the number of new referrals (ASD12, ASD12a and ASD12b) are calculated using the latest submitted data which means that the Psych UK figures for previous months are included in the England level figures.
15 May 2025 09:30 AM
Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS) Version 6
The April 2024 to March 2025 reporting period figures are the fourth to be published using MHSDS v6. The implementation of MHSDS v6 includes a fundamental restructuring of the recording of key areas, although none that impact the Autism Waiting Times publication.
Full details of the major methodological changes made for this publication can be found here.
Figures should be interpreted with caution as Data Quality issues may be present in the data used to create the measures. Please see the 'Data Quality Comments' available from here which contains details of providers who have reported Data Quality issues.
15 May 2025 09:30 AM
Methodology
Analytical approach
There is one main approach to autism waiting time statistics published here, contributing to an overall picture of the experience of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnostic pathways.
The analysis takes the latest record of all referrals where the reason for the referral is suspected autism. For each month in the reporting period, we look at whether the referral was new, open at any point or closed in the month.
Waiting time to care contact approach
For waiting times, we use the referrals for suspected autism which were open within the month. We then look at the date of the first attended care contact related to those referrals if one has occurred. The waiting time taken here is the time from initial referral to the first care contact.
More detailed descriptions of the analysis undertaken can be found on the construction page of this publication, found here.
These statistics are based on the information collected from the Mental Health Services Dataset. Further detail on the information captured within the Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS) is available here.
Access the code used to create this report
From September 2023, the code used to create the outputs for this report is available on our NHS Digital GitHub webpage.
Last edited: 15 May 2025 9:40 am