Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 21
21
Accepted
NHS England unable to guarantee future compliance on special severance payment approvals.
Recommendation
We asked NHS England what progress it had made in addressing the approvals and ensuring that payments being made without being approved did not happen again. NHS England recognised that “every case that is 31 Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Consolidated NHS Provider Accounts 2023–24, HC 399, 26 November 2024, page 47; Department of Health and Social Care Annual Report and Accounts 2023–24, pages 164, 189 32 Committee of Public Accounts, Sixth Report of Session 2022–23, Department of Health and Social Care 2020–21 Annual Report and Accounts, HC 253, 10 June 2022 33 HM Treasury, Treasury Minutes: Government Response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Second, and the Fourth to the Eighth reports from Session 2022–23, CP 708, August 2022 34 HM Treasury, Managing Public Money, May 2023, page 142 35 Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Consolidated NHS Provider Accounts 2023–24, HC 399, 26 November 2024, page 47; Department of Health and Social Care Annual Report and Accounts 2023–24, HC 476, 17 December 2024, page 164 17 not properly approved is wrong”. It told us that it continued to work with providers and ICBs to “remind them of their duties” including through regular training sessions. NHS England told us that it considered its current approach of reminding NHS providers of the requirements to be proportionate, but was unable to guarantee that there will not be future examples where NHS bodies fail to follow the process and obtain the required approvals.36
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the committee's recommendation, stating NHS England is redrafting guidance on exit packages and approval mechanisms, which will be communicated by end of Summer 2025. This aims to improve compliance, reiterate rules, and ensure payments are properly approved.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
6.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation Target implementation date: end Summer 2025 6.2 NHS England is currently redrafting the guidance around exit packages and the associated approval mechanisms. This guidance will include instruction on all types of exit packages including voluntary severance, Mutually Agreed Resignation schemes (MARS), compulsory redundancies, and special severance cases. This guidance will be communicated via the regional workforce teams as well as via the NHS England external website. This should have an impact on exits agreed from 2025-26. 6.3 Where instances arise with compliance with the approval mechanism for exit packages, NHSE conducts a lesson-learnt exercise and reiterates the approval rules via several avenues. For example, NHSE directly liaises with the organisations involved to ensure the rules are understood, and through financial control events where NHSE promotes good practice and reminds delegates of the governance arrangements for certain types of transactions. So far for 2024-2025 NHSE has seen fewer instances of non-compliance, but the final assurance process on this is not fully complete as of May 2025. 6.4 Regarding the future arrangements for exit packages, the oversight mechanism will depend on where the legal powers reside after the integration of NHSE into the future Department of Health and Social Care. NHSE will ensure it is picked up in the transition process.