Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his planned timetable is for capital funding decisions for critical care infrastructure projects identified as integrated care board priorities in Birmingham and North Solihull.

Capital funding is provided through a combination of locally managed operational capital and national capital programmes. Within their capital allocations, Integrated care boards are responsible for prioritising investment locally, working with partnered National Health Service trusts to determine which schemes should be taken forward first.

There is no single national timetable for decisions on individual local schemes. Funding decisions for critical care infrastructure projects in Birmingham and North Solihull will be driven by the national capital settlement and the Department’s business planning, and then by the annual NHS planning cycle, which is when systems submit plans setting out proposed use of funding and demonstrate affordability.

In practice, decisions on the release of funding for specific schemes depend on the maturity of proposals, including business case readiness, and whether they can be shown to be affordable within agreed plans.

Decisions on future capital funding beyond existing allocations will be considered through the usual planning and spending review processes.