Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 17
Eighth report: NHS capital expenditure and financial management
Published 8 Jul 2020
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee NHS capital expenditure and financial management All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
Making better use of capital investment and its existing assets to drive transformation is one of the key financial commitments in the NHS Long Term Plan.37 The Department had intended to announce its capital strategy for 2020–21 to 2024–25 in the autumn 2019 Spending Review. However, a one-year spending round was delivered given the government’s focus on exiting the EU, with a full spending review postponed to 2020.38 In October 2019, the Department published the Health Infrastructure Plan which announced £2.7 billion for hospital projects for six NHS providers between 2020 and 2025.39 During the COVID-19 pandemic, transformation of services was halted and capital expenditure requests from trusts were required to be clearly linked to delivering the COVID-19 response to ensure the immediate needs of the pandemic were met. The Department explained that, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the government had an extensive range of capital plans, but still had several decisions to make about longer-term capital that were put on hold.40
From: Public Accounts Committee, Eighth report: NHS capital expenditure and financial management (HC 344), 8 July 2020
Government response
No government response linked yet: deadline 8 September 2020, 2245 days ago.