News

NHS England publishes allocation of commissioning resources for 2015/16

Following this week’s (17 December) Board meeting, NHS England has today published the clinical commissioning group (CCG) and primary care allocations for 2015-16 and the notional split to CCG level to support the primary care co-commissioning agenda and the notional specialised commissioning balance by CCG for 2015-16.

The allocations include the recently announced £1.98bn of additional funding for frontline health services and to help kick start the transformation agenda set out in the NHS Five Year Forward View.

  • NHS England is passing £1.5 billion to frontline health services including primary care, local clinical commissioning groups (CCG), and specialised services. Every CCG will get real terms budget increase. More of the extra funding for local health services is being used to more rapidly increase NHS budgets for those parts of the country with the greatest health needs, where the population is growing rapidly, and where services are under greatest pressure.
  • £480 million of the extra funding (on top of the £1.5 billion described above) will be used to support transformation in primary care, mental health and local health economies;
  • Spending on GP and primary care services will for the first time in a number of years grow in real terms at a higher rate than for other local health services, in recognition of the pressures in primary care.
  • To begin tackling relative underinvestment in mental health services, every CCG will be expected to use its extra funding to increase funding for local mental health services in real terms next year by at least the level of the CCG’s overall funding growth. In addition a further £110 million of dedicated purchasing power is being injected nationally to improve services for people with severe mental health problems, with anxiety and depression, and with eating disorders particularly children and adolescents.

View details of the allocations letter and the annexes.

The announcement of the allocations comes as leaders of the NHS in England today set out new steps to be taken during 2015/16 to deliver the NHS five-year forward view. Called The Forward View into action: partnership and planning for 2015/16, the planning guidance is backed by the £1.98bn of additional funding.