Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how much money they have redirected from acute services to community services in England, for example through community provision for people with severe learning difficulties; and how much money is flowing in the opposite direction.

Local National Health Service clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are responsible for funding the majority of acute and community services. NHS England sets CCG funding allocations but does not direct CCGs in how those funds should be applied between different services. The in-year reporting of CCG expenditure does not provide the fine detail on movements in expenditure between acute services and community services. However, the NHS does produce programme budgeting data on historical expenditure which provides information on expenditure by major health condition as well as, for last three years, a breakdown by care-setting. The data on expenditure by care-settings is relatively new and is not yet considered robust enough to make comparisons of expenditure by care-setting. The 2013-14 data will be available in 2015, under a revised format.