The government partially accepts this recommendation. Improving access and reducing waiting times for mental health services is essential to achieving equality with physical health and ensuring people receive timely, high- quality care wherever they live. National access and waiting time standards are an important mechanism for driving consistency, transparency and accountability across the system. NHS England has already introduced standards for some services, such as access to NHS Talking Therapies and early intervention in psychosis. Work is underway to extend these to a broader range of mental health pathways, including community mental health services for children and adults. Data on waiting times for NHS-funded community mental health and urgent and emergency care is now routinely published and, whilst no standard has yet been set for community mental health services, the medium term planning framework requires providers to eliminate waits of over 2 years for children and young people community mental health services by the end of the 2026 to 2027 financial year.