A message from Amanda Pritchard, NHS Chief Executive
| I’m pleased to be able to share with you the operational priorities and planning guidance for 2025/26, published today following the laying of the Government’s Mandate to NHS England in Parliament. Before I go into the details, I want to start with a thank you. I know colleagues have been working incredibly hard to drive improvements, as well as manage the exceptional pressures we have seen on services and budgets. And that work is delivering results. The NHS is providing more appointments, tests and treatment than ever before. The pace of that growth has outstripped funding thanks to productivity and efficiency gains you have made, including bringing down agency spend. But we also all know the timeliness and experience of care is still not nearly good enough for many patients. So the challenge for 2025/26 is to go further and faster on improvement while continuing to build momentum towards long term solutions. The Government has prioritised more funding for the NHS, but there are also more costs next year. That means we collectively need a continued strong focus on financial rigour and productivity – while laying the foundations for reform. For many organisations this will mean reducing spend, and for every organisation it will mean delivering more value with what we have. We are therefore giving systems greater freedom to manage constrained budgets, transferring a higher proportion of funding than ever before directly to local systems and minimising ringfencing, allowing local leaders maximum flexibility to plan better and more efficient services. And, together with Government, we have honed down national priorities to increase local autonomy; reflecting the Mandate, the guidance asks systems to focus on: · reducing the time people wait for elective care · improving A&E waiting times and ambulance response times · improving patients’ experience and access to general practice and urgent dental care · improving patient flow through mental health crisis and acute pathways, and improving access to children and young people’s mental health services. As set out in one of the annexes to planning guidance, we are also working hard to streamline the planning process, providing systems with more practical support and requiring fewer returns. In return, we are asking you to engage more actively with each other, and with your local stakeholders, to develop plans which are deliverable, and everyone is signed up to. To be clear, the government has made difficult choices to provide additional funding for the NHS and we must all now live within our means. This will be a big task and we don’t expect systems to tackle it alone. So, at the end of the process, we will also agree a ‘compact’ with systems which sets out what each organisation will do and the support you will get from NHS England. As part of our evolving operating model, NHS England will reprioritise to focus on providing that support and oversight – as well as essential ‘do once’ services for the NHS. We recognise that difficult decisions and choices will need to be made. To balance operational priorities with the funding available, while also continuing to lay the foundations for the 10 Year Health Plan, the NHS will need to reduce or stop spending on some services and functions and achieve unprecedented productivity growth in others. We will do everything we can to support you in this task. We will back the decisions you make where they are rooted in the needs of your populations and all reasonable steps have been taken to maximise resources available for clinical services. It is of course right that NHS England takes the same steps to maximise value as we are asking of the wider NHS. We all have an equal responsibility to look at where we can make savings and efficiencies, maximising the resources available for patient care. Therefore, we will continue to reduce the size of NHS England, taking action to save £150 million of non-pay resources and reducing our staffing costs by a further £175 million, equivalent to around 15% of our new NHS England structures – giving £325 million to support the frontline over the coming year. Taking the opportunities and rising to the challenges of this coming year will require exceptional leadership – something we have in spades across the NHS. Staff at all levels have shown we can be ambitious, and deliver. And we are in this together; as someone said on our national webinar this morning: “the short and long term challenges you outline are as expected and we will either step up and solve them, or not. The choice is up to us and if we do not step up, who is going to do it?” Planning guidance resources · 2025/26 priorities and operational planning guidance · Our new operating model: supporting you to deliver high quality care for patients · Revenue finance and contracting guidance for 2025/26 · NHS financial framework: integrated care board and system finance business rules · Capital guidance for 2025-26 · Guidance on developing the joint forward plan Other useful links: · NHS Standard Contract 2025/26 consultation · NHS Payment Scheme 2025/26 consultation · Allocation of resources 2025/26 · Better Care Fund policy framework 2025 to 2026 · Better Care Fund (BCF) planning requirements Neighbourhood health guidance · 2025/26 Neighbourhood health guidelines · Standardising community health services |
Content originally from NHS England
SWF Health & Social Care Group 