News / Hammond allocates additional capital for STPs

08 March 2017

Login to access this content

In a Budget that also gave additional funds for social care and GP triage in A&E, Mr Hammond (pictured) said health secretary Jeremy Hunt anticipated some STPs would be ready before his autumn Budget – the £325m would support their capital needs and would be followed by a multi-year capital programme in the autumn Budget.

He said STPs would bring short- and medium-term benefits, adding: ‘We recognise the progress the NHS is making in developing sustainability and transformation plans. And we recognise, too, that in addition to the funding already committed, some of those plans will require further capital investment. Image removed.

So the Treasury will work closely with the Department of Health over the course of the summer as the STPs are progressed and prioritised.

‘And at the autumn Budget I will announce a multi-year capital programme to support implementation of approved high quality STPs.’

Local authorities in England will receive an extra £2bn in grant funding over the next three years, with £1bn available in 2017/18. The chancellor said this would allow them to commission additional care packages that would take some of the pressure off NHS beds.

‘The social care funding package I have announced today will deliver immediate benefit to the NHS allowing it to re-focus on delivering the NHS England forward view plan,’ he said.

In the build-up to the Budget, there were calls for the NHS to receive additional funding – the British Medical Association, for example, urged the chancellor to increase health spending to levels seen in other top European economies. This would require an extra £10bn, it said.

NHS Providers, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine told Mr Hammond that any additional funds for social care must benefit the NHS. And the NHS Confederation said it was time for the government to admit that the service could not deliver all services under the current funding levels.

With 24 local authorities responsible for more than half of all delayed discharges to social care, the health and community secretaries will identify and support those that are struggling, ensuring more joined-up work with the NHS.

A green paper on the future financing of social care will be published later this year, Mr Hammond added.

The Budget generally received a qualified welcome – the consensus was that while the additional money was helpful, longer-term solutions to social care funding was needed.


Clive Betts, chair of the Commons Communities and Local Government Committee said the additional social care funding was welcome, but fell £500m short of the amount his committee believed was needed in 2017/18.

He added: The government should provide explicit confirmation that the funding today is new money. From the Budget documents it is not clear this is the case. The announcement of a green paper on social care in the long term is welcome but to provide an effective solution to the challenges for our social care system this should be part of an urgent review, undertaken on a cross-party basis.'

In a third announcement affecting the NHS, Mr Hammond said there was evidence that GP triage in A&E had a positive impact on waiting times. He would allocate a further £100m of capital for up to 100 new triage programmes in English hospitals for next winter.

NHS Providers’ director of policy and strategy, Saffron Cordery, welcomed the news on capital funding for STPs. She added:While it is right that we invest for the future, we also need to address day to day capital funding to deal with a worrying building maintenance backlog that has built up in recent years due to continual raids on the NHS’ capital budget to support other priorities.’

The £100m for GP triage would help more trusts adopt an effective approach, but she added that finding sufficient GPs to staff the new triage departments would be a key issue.

She concluded: ‘The chancellor’s initiatives are helpful and will provide much needed support in the short term. But they do not by themselves provide sustainable solutions for the NHS and care services over the medium to long term. The gap between what the NHS is being asked to deliver and the resources available will continue to grow. Funding increases for the health service will be much lower for the next four years than in the first year of this parliament. This is despite demand rising by between 4% and 5% each year. We have to find a long-term answer to this funding gap.’