Government reveals CfH underspend

NHS Connecting for Health underspent on both capital and revenue in the last financial year, due to the slow pace of care records service implementations.

Figures released by health minister Ben Bradshaw reveal that the agency spent £686m on capital work in 2007/08, £229m less than the £915m budgeted for the year.

It also spent £507m on revenue, £100m less than the £607m budget, the minister declared in a parliamentary written answer this week.

The figures cover the National Programme for IT in the NHS and CfH’s business costs. But a CfH spokesperson told E-Health Insider that the underspend was due to delays in delivery of the CRS.

“To protect the taxpayer, the programme's contracts were constructed on a "payment on delivery" principle,” he said. “The delays to the care records service mean that payment for these items is correspondingly delayed… lower than expected payments reflect the slower than expected pace of implementation.”

The figures show a continued trend of underspending on the programme. Last year, EHI reported that the agency had underspent £828m in the previous three financial years.

Bradshaw was responding to a question from Conservative shadow health minister Stephen O'Brien.

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