NHS secret cuts: “Capped Expenditure Process” areas

Health Minister Jeremy Hunt is about to sign-off secret plans to force changes to local NHS services – all just to cut costs. The plans could mean cuts to hospital beds, making waiting times longer, and cutting NHS staff.

The plans, called “Capped Expenditure Process” cover 13 areas of England: Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset; Cambridgeshire and Peterborough;  Cheshire and Merseyside; Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly; Devon; Morecambe Bay; North Central London; North West London; South East London; Somerset; Staffordshire; Sussex and East Surrey; Humber, Coast and Vale. [1]

Because of the likely opposition to these cuts, details of the plans aren’t available publically – making it difficult to confirm exact details of the areas covered.

To find out which constituencies are covered by the secret plans, we first had to map the areas listed above to Sustainability and Transformation Plan areas. [2] We then looked at which Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) were part of these areas, and identified which constituencies had NHS services commissioned by these CCGs.

When it comes to protecting our NHS, accuracy is so important. The staff team is working to make sure that our secret cuts campaign is as accurate as possible taking into account how little information is being made public. We’ll be updating our petitions to reflect new information as it comes out.

If you’ve got another suggestion for how we could map “Capped Expenditure Process” areas to postcodes, please email emailtheteam@38degrees.org.uk – thanks!

NOTES
[1] Originally it was reported in the Health Service Journal that there would be 14 areas covered, including Northumbria and North Lincolnshire but excluding Somerset. But this week in a note to the British Media Association, NHS England confirmed only the 13 areas listed above are part of the Capped Expenditure Process.
British Medical Association: Doctors warn new plans for severe NHS cuts are ‘shrouded in secrecy’ and will ‘cause uproar’:
https://www.bma.org.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/2017/july/cep-shrouded-in-secrecy
Health Service Journal: Exclusive: New national savings drive will ‘challenge the values’ of NHS leaders [paywall]:
https://www.hsj.co.uk/topics/finance-and-efficiency/exclusive-new-national-savings-drive-will-challenge-the-values-of-nhs-leaders/7018461.article
[2] Last summer, thousands of us chipped in to investigate the first round of secret NHS cuts called “sustainability and transformation plans”. We made headlines, from BBC News, to the front page of the Guardian. Our people-powered research was even quoted in Parliament as MP after MP said how shocked they were about the plans.
38 Degrees blog: The 38 Degrees crowdfunded investigation into secret NHS plans:
https://home.38degrees.org.uk/2016/08/26/38-degrees-crowdfunded-investigation-secret-nhs-plans/
38 Degrees blog: Investigating secret plans for NHS cuts:
https://home.38degrees.org.uk/2016/11/22/investigating-secret-plans-nhs-cuts/