FOI2026/2037

I am seeking to establish how widely ICBs use block contracts for care-home or nursing-home beds that can be used for people eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC), and whether their use has changed since ICBs were established.

For this request, a “block contract” means an arrangement under which a specified number or volume of beds is purchased, reserved or guaranteed, including arrangements where payment is made regardless of whether every bed is occupied.

Please include contracts:

• held directly by the ICB;
• jointly commissioned with a local authority; or
• commissioned through a pooled budget or other partnership arrangement.

1. Did your ICB have any such block contracts on:

– 31 March 2023; and

– the date of this request – 16 September 2026

2. For each date, please provide:

– the number of block contracts; and

– the total number of beds purchased, reserved or guaranteed under those contracts.

3. For the contracts in place on the date of this request, please provide:

– the name of each provider;

– the number of beds purchased, reserved or guaranteed;

– the total value of the contract for the current financial year;

– whether payment is guaranteed for all or part of the contracted capacity when beds are unoccupied; and

– the number of these beds that were unoccupied on the most recent month-end date for which figures are available, while remaining covered by the contract.

Please state the date used for the occupancy figure in question 3(e).

If the term “block contract” is not used by your organisation, please include any equivalent arrangement involving guaranteed volume, reserved capacity, minimum payment or payment for beds regardless of occupancy.

Please include mixed-use contracts where some or all of the contracted beds can be used for people eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare, even if the beds are not reserved exclusively for them.

If the information is held by a local authority or another organisation acting on the ICB’s behalf, please identify that organisation. Where the information is also held by the ICB, please provide it.

If information is not held for 31 March 2023, please provide the nearest available snapshot and state the date used.

If complying with any part of this request would exceed the appropriate cost limit, please fulfil the remaining parts and, under your duty to advise and assist under section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act, explain how the request could be refined to obtain the relevant information within the cost limit.

If the information is not held in exactly this form, please use your duty to advise and assist to provide the closest equivalent information you hold that would establish the ICB’s use of block contracts for care-home or nursing-home beds that can be used for people eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC).

As we are transitioning from a locality-based model to a centralised NHS GM model, there have been different approaches in each locality and as such, data has been collected in different ways.

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