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Funding worth £325m has been announced to support sustainability and transformation partnerships (STPs) by health secretary Jeremy Hunt and NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens.
The announcement, which saw Hunt and Stevens give the green light to local capital investment schemes in 15 areas of the country, was made at the King’s Fund on 19 July 2017. They included the biggest awards of £50m to go towards improvements in urgent and emergency care in Greater Manchester and £30m–£50m to go towards a new cancer centre in Cumbria that will improve access to chemo and radiotherapy.
According to NHS England, the initiative of this funding programme, which was secured in the budget in March, has been targeted at the STPs with the strongest and most advanced schemes. However, the government has also committed to make further capital investment available in the autumn.
Hunt said that there are already excellent examples of improvements being made in local areas and that this money will enable these improvements to be made even faster. “This funding will support strong local plans to help the NHS modernise and transform care for patients,” he said.
According to Stevens, the stronger STPs have performed well across three broad areas — hospital performance, patient-focused change and transformation.
“This is fantastic news for patients in Cumbria,” said West, North and East Cumbria Health and Care Partnership (STP) lead, Stephen Eames. “This significant investment in our local cancer services — in partnership with the excellent specialist services at Newcastle hospitals — means we can provide more modern cancer treatment from state of the art facilities, which will benefit people living across north Cumbria,” he added.