Background: Researchers and clinicians have long known that in aphasia, the ability to produce connected speech is poorly predicted by tests of single-word production. Connected speech is most commonly assessed using rating scales, in which the examiner rates the speech on various fluency-related and grammatical well-formedness measures. However, with this method, interrater and test–retest reliability can be poor, and since the intended utterance is not known, accuracy and appropriate of the speech content is difficult to measure.Aims: The aim of the present study was to develop and investigate the validity and usefulness of a new, freely accessible sentence production test (SPT) based on simple pictured event description.Methods & Procedures: The SPT involves describing simple pictured events. The test pictures represent a range of sentence constructions and lexical items, which elicited high response agreement in healthy controls. The simple automatised scoring procedure generates both general and specific accuracy measures. This article describes the test construction and norming procedure and reports test data from 24 participants with aphasia.Outcomes & Results: Interrater reliability for the scoring protocol was excellent. The overall sentence score was found to measure unique variance not accounted for by single-picture naming. It was unrelated to fluency measures such as speech rate. Specific scores, such as the closed-class score, measure partially overlapping, but qualitatively distinct constructs from other speech assessments.Conclusions: The SPT is quick to administer, easy to score and can be used even when a person’s speech is very limited. It provides a range of measures of sentence production that may prove informative for both clinical and research purposes.