Here’s info about the NHS underfunding in your Sustainability & Transformation Fund “footprint” area

Here is the Sustainability and Transformation Plan “footprints” map, and an index that shows which Clinical Commissioning Groups are in each footprint (or area) and what the NHS funding shortfall is for each footprint by 2020/21, if they don’t carry out the Sustainability and Transformation Plan cuts.

There are a few footprints with unpublished STPs so we haven’t yet been able to find the funding shortfall.

It’s most unlikely that the Sustainability and Transformation Plans will be able to bring the costs of running the footprints’/ areas’ NHS  down in line with the amount of money available given the underfunding.

West Yorkshire & Harrogate STP will be underfunded by £1.07bn by 2020/21, but the STP can only cut costs by £983m, compared to the costs of continuing the current level of NHS services by 2o2o/21.

So really they are fantasies. And ugly fantasies. Because NHS England and NHS Improvement have mustered a range of harsh sanctions for NHS organisations that don’t comply with the Sustainability and Transformation Fund control totals. (Control totals are the amount of money that NHS England says they can spend.) And next financial year, the control total will be for the whole footprint, not just for individual CCGs and Trusts. And it will require eliminating any deficit.

So if the Footprint STP  is unable to meet the control total and eliminate the deficit, that provides a pretext for NHS England and NHS Improvement to impose their sanctions.

This has already happened at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals. A paper for a recent Board meeting says that because they have had to “temporarily” close Chorley A&E for lack of A&E consultants, they have incurred extra costs that have created a £1.7m deficit. According to their control total, this is not allowed, so NHS England has withheld the £3.3m Sustainability and Transformation Funding it had allocated for the Trust.

But back to the STP footprints map, index and funding shortages. You can download it or look at it here:

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