Breakdown of £50 million from Health Secretary to reduce A&E waiting times: FOI Review

Information requested

1. A breakdown of how the £50 million the Health Secretary announced to reduce A&E waiting times will be distributed between all the Health Boards of Scotland. Please include the amount, or estimated amount, each health board will receive from this budget.

2. A breakdown of how each health board will be expected to spend their share of the package. In other words, how many members of staff it is expected to allow the health board to hire.

3. The calculation and rationale behind the £50 million figure. Specifically documents which show how that specific figure was arrived at and decided upon.

4. Who specifically from the Scottish Government decided on the figure and who was present when the amount was settled on.

Response

I have been asked to respond to your review request because I was not involved in handling your original request.

Response:

Point 2 and 3 were provided in the original response 202200303879.

Point 1: At the time of the original response, exemption 17(1) of FOISA was applied to point 1 as the information requested was not held at the time. Having reviewed your request, I am satisfied that proper consideration was given to this decision, and that exemption 17(1) was applied correctly.

However, as most of this information requested has since been finalised. I can now confirm the breakdown of allocated funding as follows:

NHS Board	Urgent and Unscheduled Care Collaborative Funding 2022/2023
NHS Ayrshire and Arran	£2,600,000
NHS Borders	£760,000
NHS Dumfries and Galloway	£1,055,000
NHS Fife	£2,420,000
NHS Forth Valley	£1,930,000
NHS Grampian	£3,500,000
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde	£7,815,000
NHS Highland	£2,330,000
NHS Lanarkshire	£4,340,000
NHS Lothian	£5,275,000
NHS Orkney	£175,000
NHS Tayside	£2,750,000
NHS Shetland	£170,000
NHS Western Isles	£235,000

The remaining funding will be allocated to NHS 24 and SAS. This information is still to be finalised.

Point 4: Exemption under section s.29(1)(a)Formulation or development of Scottish Government Policy of FOISA was applied on the basis that there was a greater public interest to withhold that information. Having reviewed the information that was originally withheld, I have concluded that this information should be released to you.

Funding was allocated to deliver an annual improvement plan for Urgent & Unscheduled Care, which is aligned to each Health Board’s Annual Delivery Plan, based on the High Impact Changes they have chosen and which are specific to their local priorities. This was agreed through the Unscheduled Care Policy and Performance team and Scottish Government Health Finance, and was signed off by the Cabinet Secretary of Health and Social Care.

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