FOI 2025/1367

Please provide:
1. The amount spent on community services, by provider, in 2024-25.
2. Planned spend on community services, by provider, in 2025-26.
Please if you could provide the commissioning spend on community services (whether provided by NHS trusts or other providers), as distinct from GPs and other primary care services.

In answering this Freedom of Information request, it is necessary to provide some background information as to how expenditure and budgets are recorded within the NHS Greater Manchester (NHS GM) financial ledger. A range of identification codes exist within the financial ledger to identify the particular supplier of services. These Analysis codes exist for the majority of suppliers covering the majority of expenditure and can be applied where estimated levels of activity exist because a provider has not raised an invoice (e.g. the invoice for March 2025 activity is not received until April 2025).
Where a supplier Analysis code does not exist, expenditure is recorded against a default code, and similarly accruals for estimated activity are made against the default code. In these cases, it is not possible to separately allocate the sum of the default activity against specific suppliers. These are therefore recorded against the category of “No specific supplier identified”.
As such, it is not possible to further allocate these balances against individual providers, including accrued balances, as the data is not held in such a manner to facilitate this analysis.
Similarly, there are areas where a budget is set but the specific supplier is not known. This may be (for example) where NHS GM expects a contract to be entered in to, but does not, at the point at which the budget is set, know which provider will undertake that contract. In those instances, budgets are also set against default suppliers.
It should also be noted that whilst a budget may be set for a particular supplier, that does not mean that amount of expenditure should be expected to be incurred with that supplier. This is because the nature of the contract may require payment on performance of certain activities or the provision of certain volumes of care. In instance where those elements are not delivered, the actual outturn spend with vary accordingly.
Please see the attached spreadsheet.