Providers to campaign for capital changes

The provider body published a survey that showed deep concern about constraints on capital funding among senior trust leaders. The body said the NHS estate was crumbling and it would be difficult to deliver the NHS long-term plan as the NHS did not have the modern equipment it needs.

NHS Providers said it will campaign for the government to introduce three changes. These are:

• Introducing a long-term capital funding settlement to allow the NHS to plan for the transformation of services. The funding period should at least match the revenue settlement (up until 2023/24) and ideally the 10 years of the long-term plan period.

• Bringing capital funding in line with that in comparable countries. NHS Providers insisted the government should aim to at least double capital spend and sustain that growth for the foreseeable future.

• Ensuring funding gets to where it is needed and reducing the bureaucracy around approval of capital projects.

The providers’ body called on the government to address the capital challenge in the forthcoming spending round.

Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, (pictured) said health service backlog maintenance stood at £6bn, £3bn of it safety critical. He added it was ‘scandalous’ that the NHS spends less than half the amount spent in comparable countries on modern equipment. In a blog, he wrote that the impact on patients was ‘tangible and real’. Japan had five times more CT scanners as the UK, while countries such as Slovenia, the Russian Federation and Turkey had more CT scanners per head of population.

Following the recent announcement by Boris Johnson that the NHS would have access to an additional £1bn in capital funding in the current financial year, a request for trusts to cut back their capital spending plans by 20% was scrapped. This, and the promise of a further £850m for improvements at 20 hospitals, was a positive move, said Mr Hopson, but this could only be the start.

‘We need to rebuild our NHS, and give our doctors and nurses the tools to create the 21st century health service that patients expect and that we can all be proud of,’ he said.

‘We know the government shares our aim of a properly-funded and well-designed system of capital funding, but this support now needs to be translated into urgent action, because the risk to patients is rising every day.’

The NHS Providers survey of trust chief executives and chief finance officers found that 82% believed restrictions on capital spending posed a medium or high risk to patient safety. It could also undermine plans to transform services, they said. While 97% were worried about their need for capital, 94% said lack of capital was affecting patients’ experience of care and 92% said it was impacting on staff wellbeing and recruitment.