Almost half of the NHS trusts in England have no earmarked funding to cover staff on maternity leave, The Guardian reported. The newspaper said the finding comes from analysis that raises fresh concerns about pressure on physiotherapy services.

According to The Guardian, the analysis was based on freedom of information requests sent to the trusts by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP). The summary used for this story is incomplete at that point and does not say how many trusts were asked to respond or how many did.

The Guardian also reported that physiotherapy services were "hit particularly hard" when compared with other areas of healthcare, such as nursing. The summary does not state how much funding is missing from individual trusts or which trusts are named in the analysis.

The report was written by Tobi Thomas, the Guardian's health and inequalities correspondent, and was published on November 8, 2026. The summary frames the findings as fresh concerns about pressure on physiotherapy services, and it does not offer a comparison with earlier years.

The headline refers to half of trusts, while the summary says almost half, so the exact proportion is not clear from the material available for this story.

Sources: The Guardian: Half of NHS trusts in England lack funds earmarked to cover maternity leave.