Breastfeeding at 6 to 8 weeks, 2024 to 2025 statistical commentary
Updated 4 November 2025
Applies to England
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/breastfeeding-at-6-to-8-weeks-data-for-2024-to-2025/breastfeeding-at-6-to-8-weeks-2024-to-2025-statistical-commentary
What’s new
The prevalence of breastfeeding at 6 to 8 weeks has been updated with data for England, regions and upper tier local authorities for 2024 to 2025.
Introduction
Breastfeeding provides the best nutritional start in life for a baby, protecting the baby from infection and offering important health benefits for the mother. The government’s advice is that infants should be exclusively breastfed, receiving only breastmilk for the first 6 months of life. Following this, other drinks and foodstuffs can be introduced.
Breastfeeding status is usually collected during children’s health visitor reviews at 6 to 8 weeks. Coverage of universal health visitor reviews at 6 to 8 weeks is discussed in the Health visitor service delivery metrics statistical commentary, 2024 to 2025.
Main findings
This update shows:
- the prevalence of breastfeeding at 6 to 8 weeks in England increased to 55.6% in 2024 to 2025 compared with 52.7% in 2023 to 2024 (see figure 1). This is the highest prevalence of breastfeeding at 6 to 8 weeks reported since 2015 to 2016 when the current data collection began
- breastfeeding rates are generally improving at local level in England. Of the 76 upper tier local authorities with valid data for 2024 to 2025 and 2023 to 2024, 45 increased, 28 were stable and 3 decreased
- among upper tier local authorities, where a value could be calculated, the highest percentage of breastfeeding was 82.6% and the lowest 33.2%
Figure 1: prevalence of breastfeeding at 6 to 8 weeks in England, 2015 to 2016 to 2024 to 2025
Background
The information in this publication shows service coverage and related health outcomes for services funded through the local authority public health grant for children’s public health 0 to 5 years. This includes the coverage of universal health visitor reviews, breastfeeding at 6 to 8 weeks and child development outcomes aged 2.
The data comes from the Office of Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID’s) interim reporting system for children’s public health 0 to 5 years. The technical guidance contains full details of the health visiting, breastfeeding and child development indicators, including definitions and methodology.
Caution should be used when interpreting these figures as it is a voluntary data collection and there is not full coverage. Any figures shown at a region or England level, or by deprivation, are based on an aggregate total of local authorities within those areas who supplied data items which complied with validation criteria for each indicator.
The health reviews may be targeted towards children who are likely to need more support. This includes those living in the most deprived areas and children who are known to be vulnerable due to family or other circumstances. This may contribute to low coverage of reviews or low numbers of children meeting the expected level of development for some local authorities.
The Community Services Data Set (CSDS) will be used as the basis for these metrics in the longer term, once the data quality has reached a suitable standard.
All the data is available on Fingertips.
Contact information
For media enquiries please contact the Department of Health and Social Care media team.
For all other enquiries relating to the statistics or to offer feedback on the publication please email interimreporting@dhsc.gov.uk.