NHS England will draw down a further £579m of historic surpluses to help the commissioning system this year, new board papers reveal.

However the arms’ length body told HSJ it will still have a further £497m of historic under spends to carry forward at the end of this year.

According to a finance paper to be presented at NHS England’s board meeting on Thursday, the commissioning system plans to spend its total recurrent funding allocation of £100.8bn in 2015-16, topped up with a further £579m of “prior year surplus drawdown”.

This will give a total funding allocation of £101.3bn, which NHS England expects the commissioning system will spend in full.

NHS England told HSJ it started 2014-15 with a total cumulative surplus of £795m.

However it exceeded its target surplus last year by £283m, giving it a total carry forward of £1.08bn at the end of the year.

The £579m will be drawn down from this amount, leaving £497m to be carried forward at the end of 2015-16.

 This article was updated at 5.17pm to reflect new information from NHS England.

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