NHS England has underspent its budget by £600m, its annual report has revealed.
Writing in the annual report, NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens said that NHS England ’met each of the financial duties placed on us by Parliament in 2015/16, including once again balancing our budget of just over £100 billion’.
He concluded that: ’In 2015/16 we contributed a £0.6 billion managed underspend to help offset substantial overspends elsewhere.’
NHS England’s ‘Informed’ newsletter said the exact figure was £599m and that this was being ‘contributed’ by NHS England ’to help offset underspends elsewhere’.
An NHS England spokesperson clarified that it would stay with NHS England as a contingency fund for this year.
The news comes after Pulse reported that NHS England may have underspent £163m on primary care last year, as a finance report from NHS England showed that budgeted spend on ‘primary care and secondary dental’ was £10.395bn in 2015/16, but only £10.232bn was actually spent.
