Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what deadline NHS England has set for submissions of new policy proposals to be considered as part of the second round of its 2018-19 prioritisation process for specialised services.

NHS England’s Clinical Priorities Advisory Group (CPAG) plans to meet in November 2017 and again in May 2018 to form its recommendations to NHS England’s Specialised Commissioning Oversight Group, which in turn makes recommendations to Specialised Services Commissioning Committee on funding for 2018/19.

As part of the second round of its 2018/19 prioritisation process for specialised services NHS England's will consider all new or revised policy propositions eligible for consideration that have been developed in line with the published ‘Methods’ document, which sets out how CPAG would make future investment decisions. This approach ensures that policy proposals are developed by clinical leaders, reflect available evidence on clinical effectiveness, consider feedback from stakeholders and the public, and have been consistently costed to allow relative prioritisation.

So far, nine policy proposals along with seven service specification proposals are currently scheduled for consideration at the November meeting of NHS England’s CPAG meeting. Policy propositions would need to be submitted by 9 October 2017 for consideration at the November Clinical CPAG meeting. The deadline for completed policy propositions for the planned May 2018 CPAG meeting has not yet been set.

Any entirely new policy proposals would need to be considered as a potential service development for 2019/20.

NHS England publishes details of the clinical commissioning policies being developed and/or revised. Further details on NHS England’s service development process and prioritisation process are available on NHS England’s website:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/