The State of Support 2014/15

Summary

Last year we published the income for each local Healthwatch. We also set out our concerns about both the lack of transparency in funding for local Healthwatch and our concerns about the significant variations in funding across the network.

To provide greater transparency, we are again publishing the amount of funding each local Healthwatch has received to deliver their statutory activities. However, due the to the complexity of contracting arrangements it is not always possible for local Healthwatch to identify how much of their funding is to deliver their statutory activities as local Healthwatch and how much is for other activities they may be delivering such as the NHS complaints advocacy services.

The income figures for 2014/15 were originally provided to us by local Healthwatch in May/June 2014. Local Healthwatch were then provided another opportunity to confirm these figures in November 2014.

They show that across England there was only a 0.7% change in the total income for local Healthwatch which was £34.4m in 2014-15.