Veterans: Health Services
(asked on 21st May 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the allocated budget was for (a) Operation Courage and (b) Operation Restore in each financial year between 2020-21 and 2024-25; and how much funding has been allocated to each programme in the 2025-26 financial year.
On 13 March 2025, it was announced that NHS England will be brought into the Department to form a new joint centre. We are assessing the full range of current functions across both organisations and options for future allocation. At this stage, it is too early to say what precise changes in personnel and organisational design will be.
The following table shows the actual spend on Op COURAGE and Op RESTORE for 2020/21 to 2024/25 and the budget for 2025/26:
Financial Year | Op COURAGE (£ mil) | OP RESTORE (£ mil) |
2020/21 | 17.9 | 0.3 |
2021/22 | 18.5 | 0.2 |
2022/23 | 23.0 | 0.6 |
2023/24 | 23.8 | 0.5 |
2024/25 | 24.4 | 0.9 |
2025/26 | 24.9 | 0.9 |
Source: NHS England
The following tables show the referral numbers for Op COURAGE and Op RESTORE since 2017/18 and 2018/19, respectively, as well as the percentage of referrals for Op COURAGE met within relevant targets since 2023/24 and for Op RESTORE since 2021/22:
Financial Year | Referrals to Op COURAGE | % of urgent referrals assessed within one week | % of routine referrals assessed within 2 weeks |
2017/18 | 2879 | - | - |
2018/19 | 4561 | - | - |
2019/20 | 5374 | - | - |
2020/21 | 4903 | - | - |
2021/22 | 5970 | - | - |
2022/23 | 6272 | - | - |
2023/24 | 6817 | 75 | 49.5 |
2024/25 | 7251 | 76 | 44.3 |
Source: NHS England
Financial Year | Referrals to Op RESTORE | % assessed by multi-disciplinary team within 8 weeks |
2018/19 | 50 | - |
2019/20 | 50 | - |
2020/21 | 41 | - |
2021/22 | 149 | 100 |
2022/23 | 265 | 98.4 |
2023/24 | 371 | 99.7 |
2024/25 | 350 | 97.7 |
Source: NHS England