Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what requirements Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Trust has to meet in order to access an increased sustainability transformation fund allocation.

Access to both the general and targeted elements of the Sustainability Transformation Fund provisionally allocated to providers will be unlocked as they meet their financial control totals. At each quarter, 70% of allocated funding will be released upon achievement of the financial control total, with a further 30% released where a provider also meets its agreed trajectories for delivery of operational standards. Trusts should work on the basis that they must achieve all the criteria of the fund, including individual improvement trajectories, in order to receive the funding.