Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much transformation funding for (a) learning disability and (b) autism services NHS England has allocated to integrated care board areas for 2025-26.

As set out in NHS England’s Planning Guidance, integrated care boards (ICBs) are expected to work with local system colleagues to ensure that there is high quality and accessible community infrastructure in place for people with a learning disability and autistic people. They should also ensure that admissions to a mental health hospital are for assessment and treatment that can only be delivered in an inpatient setting.

ICBs are planning to spend £3.35 billion on Learning Disability and Autism services in 2025/26. Previous transformation funding for learning disability and autism has been transferred to core ICB funding. This is in line with the objective of giving systems greater financial flexibility to manage constrained budgets, which includes 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.