Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what guidance her Department provides to ICBs on making use of capital budgets allocated on the basis of hospital deprecation for primary care capital investment.

The Department provides over £12 billion between 2022/23 and 2024/25 for National Health Service operational capital. This funding is managed by NHS England and it, rather than the Department, issues the capital planning guidance to the NHS and the integrated care boards (ICBs), which covers both primary and secondary care.

Most of the operational capital funding is allocated to the 42 ICBs and they prioritise and assign the funding across their partner organisations based on their local needs.

From 2022/23, annually, £100 million of this funding for capital investment in primary care estate and IT, which is the protected minimum for primary care investment, and ICBs are able to increase capital for primary care in their region as long as their plans, in aggregate, remain within their set budget.