NHS told to spend next winter's money now

NHS organisations say they are dipping into funds they expected to spend next winter, in a bid to stave off an Accident & Emergency crisis this month

NHS
NHS Credit: Photo: ALAMY

The NHS is spending funds which were intended to cope with pressures next winter now amid fears of a “spring crisis”.

Health officials have been told to keep running schemes which were set up this winter to ease the burden on hospitals until the end of April, amid concern about poor Accident & Emergency performance.

As a result, a number of areas said they are spending funds now which would normally be spent much later in the year, in a bid to relieve pressures.

The admissions about the use of resources during a period of unseasonably warm weather, suggest services could come under even greater strain in the run-up to winter.

Some senior doctors said the timing suggested officials were under “political pressure" to avoid bad publicity about NHS performance in the run-up to the General Election.

NHS Dudley clinical commissioning group (CCG), NHS Southampton City CCG and NHS Stafford and Surrounds CCG all told Pulse magazine that they were using funds from the allocation for "winter pressures" now.

A&Es have come under growing pressure in recent years

Their actions follow a memo last month from NHS England, which said that “all schemes that have already been put in place as part of operational resilience plans for 2014/15 should continue to operate during April” instructing CCGs to fund them in full.

Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, suggested the decisions were a bid to avoid a crisis as Britain prepares to go to the polls.

He said: “I’m not aware of NHS England being as prescriptive as this in previous years, and there is obvious huge political pressure to avoid negative stories relating to the NHS leading up to the election.”

In previous years, the annual fund to help services design schemes to relieve pressures on A&E has been labelled “winter” funding.

This year the fund has been called “system resilience funding” and allocated earlier in the financial year, to allow earlier planning.

An NHS England spokesman said: “In light of the continuing pressure on urgent care services, we asked local health economies to maintain their current resilience schemes until all plans for this year have been agreed. This ensured additional resilience over the Easter period.”