Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is able to take to redistribute funding from clinical commissioning groups that are over their target allocation.

Responsibility for clinical commissioning group (CCG) allocations rests with NHS England rather than the Department, as set out in The Mandate. These decisions have been taken independently of Government, in order that such an important issue as funding is made objectively and free from perceived political considerations.

The funding allocated to all CCGs is based on the CCG allocations formula. This is based on advice provided by the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation (ACRA). ACRA is an independent committee and reports jointly to the Secretary of State for Health (in regard to public health allocations) and NHS England in regard to CCG and primary care allocations.

In regards to determining how quickly to move CCGs from their current allocation to the target allocation determined by the allocations formula, NHS England’s objective is to reduce the ‘distance from target’ so that areas furthest below their target allocation receive the biggest increases, and areas above their target consequently receive smaller increases. This difference in the size of increases is a judgement – it is important to ensure service stability for those areas above target, and that increases for under target areas are not so large that resources are not used efficiently. The approach also takes account of the distance from target in each area for primary care and specialised services so that the overall funding position for the area is taken into account.

NHS England recently published a technical guide to allocations which sets out all the individual factors used in determining the allocation levels. The guide is available here:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2016/04/allocations-tech-guide-16-17/#