The NHS is to be given £1.5bn in capital funding to help increase elective appointments, the government has announced ahead of the autumn budget this week.
This will include £1.5bn for new surgical hubs and scanners and £70 million for new radiotherapy machines, it confirmed.
The Treasury suggested this would enable an extra 40,000 elective appointments per week, or two million annually.
NHS capital allocations for 2024/25 were around £8bn as of May, split into system-level allocations for day-to-day operational investments (£4.1bn), nationally allocated funds for national strategic projects such as new hospitals (£1.9bn) and other national capital programme investments, such as elective recovery, diagnostics and technology (£2bn).
Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: ‘Our NHS is the lifeblood of Britain. It exemplifies public services at their best, there for us when we need it and free at the point of use, for everyone in this country.
‘That’s why I am putting an end to the neglect and underinvestment it has seen for over a decade now.
‘We will be known as the government that took the NHS from its worst crisis in its history, got it back on its feet again and made it fit for the bright future ahead of it.’
Health secretary Wes Streeting added: ‘The Chancellor is backing the NHS with new investment to cut waiting lists, which stand at an unacceptable 7.6 million today. Alongside extra funding, we’re sending crack teams of top surgeons to hospitals across the country, to reform how they run their surgeries, treat more patients, and make the money go further.’
Responding to the announcement, NHS Confederation chief executive Matthew Taylor said: ‘This is a step in the right direction – the additional revenue funding will be welcome in supporting NHS leaders to continue to tackle waiting lists. Our members working in NHS systems and trusts are working in new and innovative ways across the country to do this, which this funding will further support. Ahead of a difficult winter, this support is much needed.
‘With nine in 10 NHS leaders previously telling us that a lack of investment in capital over the last decade undermining their ability to tackle the elective backlog, a point emphasised by Lord Darzi in his independent investigation, the investment in capital is particularly welcome. We know that capital investment is critical to increasing productivity and ensuring patients are provided with the best possible care in a timely way.’
Dr Jennifer Dixon, chief executive of the Health Foundation also welcomed the announcement but said it should be part of a wider programme of investment and reform.
‘An extra 2 million appointments per year, if sustained for the next five years, could reduce the waiting list for routine hospital procedures by up to 3 million by the end of this parliament. This would represent major progress in tackling the elective backlog, although it is unlikely to be enough to enable the NHS to meet the 18-week standard,’ she said.
‘While this is a boost to NHS capital investment, it needs to be seen within the context of the £13.8bn maintenance backlog and many years of under-investment in NHS capital. We estimate that between 2010 and 2019, the UK would have invested £33bn more in health care capital had we matched the average across the EU.
‘Today’s announcement should be the opening salvo in a wider programme of investment and reform. We look forward to seeing more detail about the revenue budget for the NHS and how the government will meet its wider health commitments including improving access to primary care and prioritising the prevention of poor health.’
Last week, Nuffield Trust analysis suggested that the chancellor needs to uplift the overall Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) budget by at least 3.6% for the NHS to ‘stand still’.
It found that the NHS England budget in March was set at a rate ‘significantly below the speed of population growth and the level of patient need’. This has meant in-year top-ups have been needed to cover day-to-day services.
Commenting on the analysis, Sally Gainsbury, senior policy analyst at the Nuffield Trust said: ‘This year, largely driven by an inadequate budget settlement in March, the NHS has already had to receive top-ups from the DHSC budget, just to keep day-to-day services running. But even with those top-ups, the NHS is heading for a significant overspend this year unless eye-wateringly high and historically unprecedented efficiency savings can be made.
‘At a time of extremely tight public finances, it would be tempting to hope that a large funding increase next Wednesday could deliver the reforms needed to improve the NHS for the future. But this is a service that is running to stand still. If it is overspent to the tune of £4.8bn at the end of this financial year, this will likely mean further cuts to non-NHS budgets like public health and technology, achieving the very opposite of the laudable aims to prioritise improvements in these areas, announced for the government’s ten-year plan.’
Chief executive of NHS England, Amanda Pritchard, last week called for health leaders to share their ideas for the future of the NHS in a consultation for its 10-year health plan.
