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Chancellor Rachel Reeves has outlined plans for patient care to be brought “closer to home” through 250 neighbourhood health centres in her autumn 2025 budget announcement.
Speaking in the House of Commons on 26 November 2025, Reeves said that 250 new health ‘one stop shops’ were aimed to “bring the right local combination from GPs, nurses, dentists and pharmacists together under one roof to best meet the needs of the community, starting in the most deprived areas”.
She said this would mean that “the NHS is organised around patients’ needs — rather than patients organising their lives around the NHS”.
A drive to towards neighbourhood health services was included in the government’s ten-year plan for the NHS in England, announced in July 2025.
The Department of Health and Social Care announced the first 43 pilot neighbourhood health centres in September 2025.
In a statement published alongside the budget, the government said more than 100 of the centres would be opened by 2030.
Centres will be delivered by the NHS Neighbourhood Rebuild programme, with locations for these new services created through “a combination of public–private partnerships and public investment to bring together infrastructure expertise from different sectors to deliver new facilities on time and on budget”.
Reeves also announced £300m of new capital investment into NHS technology, with “new digital tools to be rolled out to NHS staff to support their work and improve productivity — by automating administrative tasks and providing swifter access to patient information, as well as ensuring better staff communication and better coordinated care”.
The Office of Budgetary Responsibility’s economic and fiscal outlook report, also published on 26 November 2025, warned that increased costs of NHS medicines could pose a risk to the government’s planned health spending,
“Spending risks include: the impact on the NHS budget of further strikes and negotiations over NHS pharmaceutical spending,” the report said.
“Risks to health spending include… the government’s negotiations for the US trade deal on the cost of pharmaceutical spending within the NHS.
It added: “There is a risk of higher spending on drugs depending on the outcome of negotiations over branded medicines. The spending review assumed that spending on branded medicines (around 7% of NHS [Resource Departmental Expenditure Limit, the budget for the NHS’s day-to-day running costs]) would rise by 25% (£3.3bn) between 2025/2026 and 2028/2029.
“A 5% larger rise in spending on branded medicines over the spending review would cost £0.7bn by 2028/2029.”
In August 2025, the government and the pharmaceutical industry failed to reach an agreement on the cost of branded medicines, with the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) arguing that the cost-effectiveness threshold for NHS drugs spending should be increased and pharmaceutical companies threatening to withdraw investment in the UK over the issue.
