On the 18 June 2018, the Government announced that the NHS in England will receive a real terms funding increase of £20.5 billion by 2023/24, an average of 3.4% annual real terms growth. The funding is to be front-loaded with increases of 3.6% in the first two years. Details are shown in the table below.
The additional NHS funding has been welcomed but some commentators argue that it falls short of the amount required to see improvement in NHS Services, with both the Health Foundation and The King’s Fund arguing that a real terms annual increase of 4% is required.
The Main Estimates for Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), published in April 2018, set out a Resource DEL (day-to-day spending) budget of £123.5 billion in 2018-19, this is 1.8% above last year’s budget of £121.3 billion as set out in the 2017-18 Supplementary Estimates. These figures are higher than the figures for NHS England as they include other expenditure, for example for some Public Health spending and Departmental administration, which is not all included in the NHS England figures
The new funding settlement, announced in June 2018, said that there would be an extra £800 million in 2018-19 for the new pay deal. It is expected that this additional funding will be added later in the year through a Supplementary Estimate, thus increasing DHSC’s RDEL total for 2018-19 to £124.3 billion, an increase of 2.5% on the previous year.
The Department for Health and Social Care’s Capital DEL (investment) budget for 2018-19 is £6.4 billion. This represents a 14% increase on the level for the previous year (£5.6 billion) included in the 2017-18 Supplementary Estimates.
The Memorandum for the 2018-19 Main Estimate for the Department of Health and Social Care Department of Health has been published on the HSC Committee website here alongside an annex. Scrutiny Unit analysis of the DHSC 2018-19 Main Estimate is included here.
Most social care is funded by local government. The Ministry of Housing and Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) provides some funding for local government. MHCLG’s 2018-19 Main Estimate for Local Government Resource DEL (day-to-day) is £4.3 billion, 36% below last year’s budget of £6.7 billion. Local government also has funding from council tax and retained business rates. The Memorandum for MHCLG 2018-19 Main Estimate says that Local Government Core Spending Power (which also takes into account forecasts of these other sources of income) is expected to rise by 1.9% in 2018/19 compared to the previous year.
Related Library Briefing Papers:
Adult Social Care Funding (England)