News / Commissioners striving to help NHS to balanced position

He said NHS England is ‘actively seeking’ to increase its underspend in 2015/16 to help the overall financial position at year-end.

The month eight figures, presented to the NHS England January board meeting, show a forecast year-end underspend of £145m across its budgets. However, risks and mitigations identified by CCGs and NHS England indicated the forecast underspend will rise to £207m. And a first look at month nine figures showed the year-end underspend could be closer to £400m.

‘This is in part due to the positive response of CCGs and direct commissioners,’ Mr Baumann told the meeting. Providers were aiming for a £1.8bn deficit and ‘that can just about be offset by our underspend and measures in Department of Health budgets. But the provider sector will have to pull out all the stops and sustain it into next year,’ he added.

The month eight figures show forecast overspends of £51m in clinical commissioning groups and £2.5m in direct commissioning at year-end. The latter reflects the cost pressures in specialised commissioning, particularly in the Cancer Drugs Fund, though this is offset in other areas of direct commissioning.

Overspends in CCGs and direct commissioning are forecast to be offset by a number of measures, including underspends in NHS England central spending, such as running and programme costs, and a release of continuing healthcare contingencies.

However, Mr Baumann warned that many of the measures used to improve NHS England’s year-end position this year were one-off cost reductions and would not be available in 2016/17.