Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what framework assessment is undertaken when determining the allocation of financial resources to a clinical commissioning group for primary care.

The allocations for primary medical care announced in January 2016 are based on a statistical model of workload which takes into account differences due to the age and sex of the population, differences associated with deprivation, and the higher workload associated with new registrations. There are also adjustments for differences in the unavoidable costs of general practitioner practice staff across the country and for unmet need.

The model determines target allocations, while pace of change policy sets how quickly actual allocations move over time towards target allocations. The pace of change policy announced in January for the period 2016-17 to 2020-21 was that no clinical commissioning group’s area is further than 5% below target by 2018-19 for primary medical care allocations.