Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what guidance, if any, they have issued to integrated care boards to ensure that community health services receive more additional funding than other services.

Our Medium-Term Planning Framework, published in October 2025, made it clear to integrated care boards (ICBs) that timely and effective community health services will be critical to shifting care out of hospital and into the community to deliver our ambitions for neighbourhood health.

ICB core programme allocations for 2026/27 to 2028/29, published in November 2025, gave an average recurrent allocation growth across all ICBs in England of 2.72% in 2026/27 and 2.92% in 2027/28.

And, for the first time, we have set a target for systems to reduce long waits for community health services in the Medium-Term Planning Framework. By 2028/29 at least 80% of community health services activity should take place within 18 weeks, bringing community health services in line with targets for elective care. Systems have also been asked to increase the capacity of community health services and to work to standardise the provision of core community services.

To help bring about integration, the Department and NHS England will create effective mechanisms which enable service level funding to flow from acute care to community health services and create financial incentives to invest in services that improve patient outcomes and deliver better value by creating funding flows and payment mechanisms that connect the savings from improved quality of care with the investment in new services in the community.