Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his policy is on the application of the special administration process to NHS trusts.

The Trust Special Administration (TSA) Regime is a bespoke, time-limited measure to address failure in National Health Service foundation trusts or NHS trusts. The TSA Regime introduced the role of Trust Special Administrator who would take over the failed trust with a dual role of running it and making recommendations for a sustainable long-term solution for its services.

The Regime is intended to be used as a measure of last resort and under specific circumstances. Consequently, the Regime is likely to be used sparingly. There are a range of other measures which can be applied before the Regime is considered.

The power to place NHS foundation trusts into the TSA regime sits with Monitor which is now part of NHS Improvement. The power for placing NHS trusts into TSA sits with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.