The Government has revealed that £88m of Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) funding went unspent by PCNs in 2023/24.
This equates to around 6% of the total £1.41bn available to PCNs that year, and NHS England does not guarantee that this underspent money stays in general practice.
NHS England told our sister title Pulse that where underspends occur in national programmes for general practice, such as the ARRS, any funding that cannot be reinvested in general practice will contribute to support the overall NHS financial position.
The underspend was revealed by primary care minister Stephen Kinnock this week, in response to a written parliamentary question on ARRS funds. He said: ‘The most recent complete year for which data is available on underspend for the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme is 2023/24.
‘The maximum value of PCN level entitlements available under the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme in 2023/24 was £1,412 million.
‘Total expenditure by PCNs in 2023/24 was £88 million below the maximum entitlements.’
NHS England confirmed that total ARRS expenditure that year was £1,324m, but did not confirm where the spare funding was spent.
The £88m figure is almost double what was uncovered by a Freedom of Investigation carried out by our other sister title Pulse PCN in June 2024. This suggested that PCNs had underspent on ARRS by at least £45m in 2023/24 across the 39 ICBs that responded – and that only a fraction of this sum (£2.3m) was reallocated to PCNs while the rest was retained by NHS England.
During 2023/24, under the Network DES, PCNs within an ICB area were able to bid for any unclaimed funding.
But NHS England removed this mechanism within the Network DES from last year onwards, and encouraged PCNs to ‘recruit up to their individual entitlements’.
Meanwhile, it was reported earlier this month that ARRS funding is to be added to allocations for ICBs from 2025/26, rather than be drawn down separately.
The former arrangements meant that ARRS funding could be clawed back by NHS England as it was ringfenced for ARRS alone. However, NHS England has confirmed that this money will now be kept by ICBs.
A version of this story was first published by our sister titles Pulse and Pulse PCN
