PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
NHS Trusts: Capital Investment (5 June 2019)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether an assessment has been made of the effect on NHS trusts of their limitations on capital spending compared with the different limitations on NHS foundation trusts.

Asked by:
Karin Smyth (Labour)

National Health Service provider organisations invest in excess of £3 billion of capital annually and are responsible for keeping their estate and infrastructure safe, by prioritising their available capital and revenue budgets accordingly. The Department is working with NHS England and NHS Improvement so that Trusts have the ability to spend to keep their estate safe.

Data from the annual Estates Return Information Collection (ERIC) suggests level of backlog in the NHS estate has increased across recent years. To support providers maintain existing estates and invest in new facilities, the Government announced £3.9 billion of additional capital funding in the 2017 Spring and Autumn Budgets, and the Government has been clear that it will consider proposals from the NHS to support transformation of the estate as part of the forthcoming Spending Review.

Both NHS trusts and foundation trusts receive income on the same basis, and where additional capital investment funding is provided centrally there are no differences between access to, or assessment processes, for NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts. Although NHS trusts are subject to some additional layers of governance in respect of capital investment when compared to NHS foundation trusts, these are not intended to impose limitations on their capital spending, rather to provide the balance between trusts’ freedom to manage their own capital investments with an assurance process for the approval of capital investment plans in the context of the wider financial sustainability of the bodies.

Answered by:
Stephen Hammond (Conservative)
12 June 2019