Pooled Budgets and the Better Care Fund: A Practical Guide for Local Authorities and Health Bodies (2017 Edition)

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Pooled budgets have operated widely across health and social care for over two decades. They are a natural adjunct of integrated working, and that is very much at the top of the government’s agenda. Moreover, the Better Care Fund, introduced in 2015–16, has required every authority to manage significant funds through pooled arrangements.

That makes it very timely for CIPFA to issue guidance on the key considerations in setting up and managing a pooled budget.

The aim is to define the basic principles of financial management, governance and accountability that partners in budget pooling arrangements, or indeed other forms of partnership working, should follow, and to consider the relevant accounting issues.

The guide provides practical tools such as a checklist of matters to consider, an example of how to decide which agency should lead the arrangement, a model scheme of delegation to boards, and a pro forma VAT invoice format.

The guide considers the background to budget pooling, including the purpose of pooling, the basics of partnership arrangements and some other options available to health and social care organisations pursuing similar objectives.

It goes on to consider specific issues arising from pooling: managing a pooled budget, corporate governance, financial management, VAT and audit and assurance. These matters then feed into an appendix on accounting issues.

There is also a full consideration of the particular case of the Better Care Fund (BCF), both as a useful case study for the principles, and because a good proportion of the rest of the guidance (eg the pros and cons of pooling and options for setting up pooling arrangements) are less relevant to the BCF as the decisions are already built in.

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