Funding needed to sustain services

With an eye of November’s Budget, confederation chief executive Niall Dickson said he recognised that the Chancellor had difficult decisions to make. ‘But given the precarious state of the service and current finances, as well as the projected levels of inflation, the confederation’s view is that £4bn a year will be required just to sustain the NHS in England for each of the next two years, he said. On top of this Mr Dickson called for a £2bn a year transformation fund to drive much needed reform and said that the cost of any pay award must be met ‘on top of this’. Even with the additional funding, NHS providers would still face a major challenge to recruit the staff needed to keep the system going.

‘We are also clear that anything the health service receives should be matched by equivalent levels of increase for adult social care,’ Mr Dickson said, adding that a longer term review was also needed to establish the right level of funding for both health and social care.

Under current plans, this year’s NHS England revenue budget of £110bn is due to rise to just under £116bn in 2019/20.

The Confederation’s comments follow-up an earlier joint letter to the Chancellor from it and a number of other bodies including NHS Providers, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and Carers UK. The letter did not put a specific figure on the required revenue increase, but did call for existing spending plans to be revisited. 

It said that current spending plans for the next three years amounted to a real terms increase of £2.8bn. Meeting the Conservative Party manifesto promise of an £8bn real terms increase over the next five years would mean a £5.2bn real terms increase for the last two years of the Parliament. ‘It should instead be brought forward now to address significant current challenges,’ the letter said.

The letter also underlined the importance of sustainable funding for social care and also called for a £2bn transformation fund in each of the next two years ‘solely for the purpose of transforming services’ and in addition to the current Sustainability and Transformation Fund.

The letter also reminded the government of the Conservative Party manifesto promise to fund ‘the most ambitious programme of investment in buildings and technology the NHS has ever seen’.