The Bed Availability and Occupancy (KH03) collection is a quarterly collection from all NHS organisations that operate beds, open overnight or day only. It collects the total number of available bed days and the total number of occupied bed days by consultant main specialty.

Data
Overnight Beds – KH03
Day only Beds – KH03

Note for 2020-21 data: hospital capacity has had to be organised in new ways as a result of the pandemic to treat Covid and non-Covid patients separately and safely in meeting the enhanced Infection Prevention Control measures. This results in beds and staff being deployed differently from in previous years in both emergency and elective settings within the hospital. As a result, caution should be exercised in comparing overall occupancy rates between this year and previous years. In general hospitals will experience capacity pressures at lower overall occupancy rates than would previously have been the case.

Time Series

Beds Time-series 2010-11 onwards (XLS, 118KB)
Beds Time Series – 1987-88 to 2009-10 (XLS, 34K)

Statistical Press Notice

Statistical Press Notice, Quarter 3 2023-24 (PDF, 74KB)

Pre-release Access List

KH03 Pre-Release Access List (PDF, 49KB)

Guidance
KH03 Guidance January 2023 (PDF, 265KB)

KH03 Guidance FAQ (PDF, 139KB)

Archived Data
Prior to 2010-11 the KH03 was an annual return collecting beds by ward classification. It also included data on Residential Care beds.
Residential Care Beds
Critical Care Beds Census

Contact Us
For further information about the published statistics, please contact us at:

Operational Information for Commissioning (National)
NHS England
Room 5E15
Quarry House
Leeds LS2 7UE
Great Britain
Email: england.nhsdata@nhs.net