Select committee: Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 21
4th Report - Community Mental Health Services
Published 2 Dec 2025
Addressed to Department of Health and Social Care
Health and Social Care Committee Community Mental Health Services All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Government should expand the use of Section 75 of the NHS Act 2006 by enabling and encouraging more widespread pooling of budgets between NHS bodies and local authorities. This expansion should support the inclusion of a broader range of services—such as housing and education— within Section 75 arrangements to facilitate integrated commissioning and service delivery. Clearer governance and greater cross-cutting oversight of these arrangements would allow funding to follow need rather than organisational boundaries, enabling more person-centred, coordinated support for people with SMI. (Recommendation, Paragraph 143)
From: Health and Social Care Committee, 4th Report - Community Mental Health Services (HC 566), 2 December 2025
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 11 March 2026 (deadline 2 February 2026).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government's response to the committee's report accepts some recommendations, partially accepts others and does not accept others, and sets out a wider programme of mental health reform.
- On a 24/7 neighbourhood centre in every community, the government "partially accepts", saying it "will look at the outcome of the pilots carefully" and will make available capital funding of £473 million over 4 years for new models.
- It does not accept the call for an independent evaluation of the Community Mental Health Framework, pointing to learning already shared by NHS England and to monitoring through the national mental health services dataset.
- It accepts the recommendation on the Modern Service Framework for severe mental illness, saying "we will confirm timelines for publication in due course".
- On legislating for the Mental Health Investment Standard, it partially accepts but says "We will not be making further legislative changes in relation to mental health spending at this time."