At least half of the additional £80m investment pledged to mental health providers to help them deliver new access targets will come from existing budgets, HSJ can reveal.

In a reverse of last year’s decision to cut mental health trust budgets by more than acute trusts NHS England and Monitor have imposed a 0.35 per cent uplift to the national tariff for mental health.

This will result in an estimated £40m less having to be saved through efficiencies by mental health trusts.

However, providers will have to use this money to meet new access targets to ensure 50 per cent of people experiencing a first episode of psychosis receive a National Institute for Health and Care Excellence approved package of care within two weeks of referral.

The new target is part of a package of measures announced by deputy prime minister Nick Clegg at the Liberal Democrats party conference in October.

The money is being released through the use of the national tariff deflator, which reduces the price of NHS contracts on top of inflationary costs such as staff and drugs. The deflator aims to drive savings across the health service.

From April next year prices for mental health services will fall by 1.55 per cent compared to a 1.9 per cent cut to acute providers.

The remaining £40m will come from “central programme funds” held by NHS England.

This includes £30m to develop liaison psychiatry services in acute hospitals and £10m to improve the improving access to psychological therapies programme.

The extra cash aims to ensure 75 per cent of people referred to an IAPT service will be treated within six weeks of referral and 95 per cent within 18 weeks.

Stephen Dalton, chief executive of the Mental Health Network, told HSJ the positive tariff deflator meant “marginally less pain” for mental health trusts, which would still have “less money to pay the same bills”.

“The problem is it’s difficult to know whether this is real investment or just moving the deck chairs around.

“I am not convinced this is a full £80m investment in mental health,” he said

He added: “I’m concerned there is a lack of science behind the costing associated with meeting the new access targets; there is a lot of wishful thinking going on.

“In the same week we are supposed to be grateful for £80m, eye watering amounts of money – nearly £700m – went into A&E departments. The scale of investment of one dwarfs the other completely.”

Saffron Cordery, director of policy and strategy at NHS Providers told HSJ: “I don’t think we have had a clear £80m investment in mental health.

“We have probably seen a £40m investment but we need to see where the rest is going to come from. Commissioners need to invest across the piece of mental health services.”

Joy Chamberlain, chair of the Independent Mental Health Services Alliance of 11 leading private providers, said she was disappointed the tariff did “little to address the significant disinvestment in the sector in recent years”.

She described the positive tariff deflator as a “redirection of current funding rather than truly additional investment and clearly does not go far enough, despite consistent commitments from the government to make mental health a priority”.

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