Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
55th Report - Reducing NHS waiting times for elective care
Public Accounts Committee
HC 820
Published 19 November 2025
Recommendations
5
Acknowledged
Require the Department to set out new plans for securing clinical engagement on outpatient transformation.
Recommendation
NHS England’s performance to date has not demonstrated that it can secure the clinical engagement that will be necessary to transform waiting lists. Clinical engagement has worked best when there been close working between national and local clinical leaders, and …
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Government Response Summary
The government agrees and states it is strengthening clinical engagement, referencing existing plans and recent engagement events with clinicians, but does not outline specific new actions it will take to secure engagement differently for the outpatients transformation programme.
HM Treasury
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Conclusions (4)
6
Conclusion
Acknowledged
We are concerned that the Department for Health and Social Care and NHS England are still announcing major reforms without either delivery plans or secured funding. We do not accept that it is prudent to make a major change, such as the structural changes that are being made to Integrated …
Government Response Summary
The government agrees, stating ICBs are designing new staffing structures within existing budgets and discussing strengthened Health and Wellbeing Boards' coordination with local authorities, but it does not confirm it will not announce unfunded commitments or provide the requested costs, funding, and impact assessment for ICB redundancies and the absorption of NHS England.
16
Conclusion
The Department wrote to us on 10 September 2025 to confirm that it has drawn down £2.2 billion of capital funding for diagnostic transformation and £1.04 billion for surgical hubs. It also confirmed that 122 surgical hubs were operational in England.32 The Department had previously written to tell us that …
18
Conclusion
NHSE told us that the additional diagnostic capacity it has created has been quickly taken up by growth in demand and that the NHS was also trying to control non-elective urgent demand.37 We were told however that while it was still struggling with waiting times, patient satisfaction rates are around …
19
Conclusion
The NAO report found that the diagnostic programme has the most established governance structure and there was evidence of in-depth reporting, while governance was less developed for surgical transformation hubs.40 The Department told us that whilst it had previously had two teams and two boards providing separate governance arrangements, it …