Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 21 November 2016 to Question 52599, what progress his Department has made on working with NHS Property Services to resolve complex billing-related disputes arising from the move to market rents.

NHS Property Services (NHSPS) has moved to charging market rents to ensure that all of its properties are charged on a consistent and transparent basis that reflects the market cost of providing such properties. This is to encourage the efficient holding of properties and optimise investment decisions. Overall this will cause the charges across the Company’s portfolio to rise by £127 million; the Department has provided an additional £127 million to the NHS England Mandate to fund the increased costs within the National Health Service of this policy change.

In November 2016 NHS England received feedback from a number of clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) regarding the funding allocation. Subsequent to this, NHS England has reissued the funding allocations in early January.

From the beginning of February the funding has been available for all CCGs to draw down and NHS England and NHSPS continue to work with CCGs to resolve any issues regarding the additional funding allocated. We understand that whilst Bristol CCG initially raised a number of queries, these have now been addressed and it has now agreed the funding uplift for the impact of market rents with NHS England, which will be passed on to all service providers in NHSPS properties.