Conclusion 11

Tenants are taking longer to pay their bills and outstanding debt is increasing. The average number of days that tenants take to pay their bills increased from 91 days in 2015–16 to 214 days in 2018–19. Outstanding debt has increased from £210 million in March 2014 to £576 million in March 2019. About 55% of the debt is for bills issued in 2018–19, the rest of the debt relates to bills NHS Property Services issued in previous years.18 NHS Property Services told that it had made good progress on the £800 million it had billed tenants for in 2018–19, recovering £600 million. Between 2014–15 and 2018–19, the Service wrote off £110 million of debt. NHS England and NHS improvement informed us that any future decisions on writing off debts will be made on a case-by-case basis. It noted that, in some cases, it may be necessary for NHS Property Services to write off an element of historic charges. For example, where past charges prove to be inaccurate or where the charging position going forward is agreed and there is no value to the health system in incurring additional cost to work through the historic billing.19