Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 9 January 2017 to Questions 58635, 58636, 58637, 58638, 58639, whether the recurrent and non-recurrent contract value let by Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group for Liverpool community health services includes (a) the National annual two per cent NHS Efficiency target and (b) the North Mersey Sustainability and Transformation Plan requirement for an annual 3.5 per cent increase in community health service case activity in each of the next five years.

We are informed by NHS England that the contract for 'core services' which will be let by NHS Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) on behalf of the CCG, Liverpool City Council and NHS England has not yet been let. Following a transaction process led by NHS Improvement (NHSI), Bridgewater NHS Foundation Trust (FT) has been identified as the preferred bidder, and the submission is being assured by NHSI. When let, the existing Liverpool Community Health NHS Trust contract will novate to Bridgewater NHS FT. As such, and as with all other major National Health Service contracts, there is no specific end point.

Efficiency targets post 2018/19 cannot be forecast for any NHS provider. For 2017/18 and 2018/19, all NHS providers are expected to deliver the nationally set target of 2% efficiencies. This would be expected of Bridgewater NHS FT across all its services.

The Cheshire and Mersey Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) contained a national template which set out that community spend was anticipated to increase by approximately 3.5% per year (for all CCGs) while hospital spend was anticipated to increase by approximately 1.8% each year. The STP, along with other planning activity, is expected to manage spend to sustainable levels while also ensuring quality and service performance are secured. In North Mersey, there is a Local Delivery System Plan which describes all the work to be undertaken to address this. This includes implementation of the Healthy Liverpool Community Model.