Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what is the annual cost to the NHS is of administrating the Staff Friends and Family Test.

NHS England are responsible for the Staff Friends and Family Test (FFT) and are unable to provide a breakdown of the annual cost of administering this test. The Staff FFT is administered from the same budget and by the same staff who work on the patient-facing FFT. The Staff FFT accounts for the smaller element of these costs.

In terms of the non-central costs of the FFT process, this is in the hands of local providers and they are responsible for promoting the FFT tool and its outcomes, but the costs are normally minimal. NHS England does not collect this information.

During peak activity around the FFT rollout to services in 2014/15, the budget was a little over £5 million. The central spend allocation has been reducing annually to reflect the reduction in work as the FFT becomes “business as usual” across NHS services. In the current year it stands at about £1 million.