Agenda item

The Board received a report proposing changes to the use of Transformation Funds in 2019/20 and 2020/21.  Oldham had been allocated £21.3m of locality transformation funding by the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership (GMHSCP) to be utilised between 2017/18 and 2020/21 across a range of transformational services.  A recent review had identified slippage of £3.0m by 2020/21, principally under the Primary Care Express Care Hub, Previously Uncommitted Funds and Cluster Gateways schemes/headings.

The GMHSCP transformation funding would cease in March 2021 and, with the risk that Oldham might lose funding and therefore the benefits of the additional funding, it was necessary to further consider the use of these resources against current operational and financial pressures in both Oldham and Greater Manchester.  To this end, discussions had been held with GMHSCP to discuss rephasing funds from 2020/12 to 2021/22 for those schemes experiencing delay, and for 2019/20 slippage being used to support Greater Manchester pressures, in return for the funding being returned in 2020/21.  Members sought and received confirmation of the conditional support of Greater Manchester included the return of funds in 2020/21.

To ensure that the Oldham Locality made full use of Transformation Funds, a number of proposals had been discussed between stakeholders in the Oldham Locality to use Transformation Fund slippage in 2019/20 and 2020/21 and these were detailed at Table 1 within the submitted report.  Members queried the process for determining the proposals, what assurance could be given at this time that these were justified proposals which the Board would wish to support, and what the anticipated benefits of the proposals were.  While there was concern at the detail provided to the Board, there was also an acknowledgement of the limited time available to achieve spend in 2019/20. 

The sustainability of schemes within the Transformation Fund, and what would happen at the end of the funding was queried.  It was noted that the intention of the Transformation Fund was that new services would provide good impacts thereby releasing funds from elsewhere in the system to provide ongoing support to the new services.  While this was not necessarily happening, the schemes were included in the 2021/22 CCG budget forward planning process for consideration.

Slippage had also been identified against the ringfenced funding for the Community Engagement Scheme and proposed schemes suggested to use this slippage in 2019/20 and 2020/21 were detailed at Table 2 within the submitted report.  Further to the earlier discussion concerning detail provided to the Board, it was further noted that there was an intention to present a business case for Community Engagement to the Board in March 2020.

RESOLVED that

1.            the proposals for the planned use of Transformation Funds for 2019/20 as set out in Tables 1 and 2 to the submitted report be supported;

2.            proposals for the use of Transformation Funds in 2020/21 be considered on the basis of the Board’s current objectives and include factors such as achievable delivery and value for money;

3.            the intention to present a business case for Community Engagement to the Board in March 2020 be noted;

4.            the planned re-phasing of Oldham’s spend in order to secure funding for new schemes and the support of Greater Manchester-wide system requirements be noted.