Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing the flexibility NHS trusts have relating to capital departmental resource limit leases to allow trusts to support (a) local authorities and (b) regeneration of the high street to help support access to local health facilities.

The Government is supportive of the National Health Service considering wider benefits from health capital investment opportunities, including high street regeneration. NHS England provides ‘business as usual’ capital allocations to integrated care systems (ICSs), who then determine how they are allocated between their operations and the NHS trusts in their system. This is based on their healthcare priorities and local system needs.

Within their allocation, ICSs, along with NHS England, can already make payments to local authorities towards healthcare expenditure on community services. For example, a local authority operating a unit for people with learning difficulties may receive a grant from the NHS body to cover the provision of healthcare to the clients in the unit. They also have the ability to grant capital to local authorities as a contribution to a facility occupied by a general practice, community trust, or a voluntary body that would provide healthcare services from the premises. However, all capital activity needs to be within the capital limit set by Parliament.