Two years ago, the previous Committee of Public Accounts reported on the Department of Health's (DH) efforts to move people with a learning disability out of mental health hospitals and into the community.

At that time, the Committee found that progress had been poor but was promised improvements. The current Public Accounts Committee has said that it can see that the DH and NHS England have since made progress with the Transforming Care programme and some people have moved out of hospital.

However, it says that more needs to be done to address known barriers. It states that:

• money is not moving with the patient to pay for support in the community,
• too many people are not having care and treatment reviews, and
• the uncertainty caused by the proposed changes to local housing allowance risks hampering the provision of accommodation in the community.

The Public Accounts Committee is also concerned that support for people with a learning disability who live in the community is patchy, saying that there are significant local variations but, on average, fewer than 6% of people with a learning disability are in employment and only 23% of people with a learning disability are registered as such with their GPs.

Local support for people with a learning disability goes on to say that there needs to be a greater focus on measuring outcomes and improvements to quality of life from the £8bn central and local government spend each year on this support.