Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what her planned timetable is for informing children's hospices of the (a) timeframe and (b) process for distribution of the children's hospice grant for 2024-25.

Financial year 2023/24 marks the final year of NHS England’s current grant agreement for the centrally funded and administered Children and Young People’s Hospice Grant, provided to all children and young people’s hospices in England. NHS England’s proposed plan for 2024/25 is to maintain the same funding as 2023/24, namely £25 million, and to use the same prevalence-based allocation approach as in 2022/23 and 2023/24.

NHS England is in the process of reprioritising budgets for 2024/25, in light of the revised assessment of financial position and, whilst it is holding funding aside for the children and young people’s hospice sector, it cannot confirm further details, including the distribution mechanism, until 2024/25 financial planning is concluded.