This year’s NHS Planning Guidance recognises the importance of improving mental health care but provides little sign of the necessary investment or transformation to meet rising levels of need, Centre for Mental Health said today.
Responding to the 2025/26 Priorities and Operational Planning Guidance for the NHS, Centre for Mental Health’s chief executive Andy Bell said: “We welcome the inclusion of better mental health crisis care and children and young people’s mental health services as one of four priorities for the NHS this year. But mental health services will not have additional funding to be able to improve them.
“The retention of the Mental Health Investment Standard for the next year will ensure every integrated care board at least retains the proportion it spends now on mental health services in the year ahead. That’s an important safeguard against mental health care budgets being diverted to other areas of health care, but unless ICBs choose to go further it will mean the NHS spends less than 10% of its funding for about 20% of all health care need. It gets us no closer to ‘parity’ between mental and physical health, or to transforming the NHS towards community, prevention and digital.
“We are deeply disappointed that waiting lists for elective care have been given priority over those for mental health care. While it’s vital to get hospital waiting times down, mental health care waiting times are just as important. Placing them on a lower footing is unjust at a time when more than a million people are waiting for mental health care in England.
“We welcome the commitment to continuing the expansion of Mental Health Support Teams in schools. They should be available to children in schools across the country, and they must come alongside specialist support for children with more complex needs, and services in communities, so that no child is left without the right help at the right time.
“This year’s Planning Guidance has dropped some key ambitions from previous years, including ensuring more people with a severe mental illness get an annual physical health check, and a requirement to implement the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework. These are both at the heart of mental health equality: vital to reduce the life expectancy gap faced by people with a mental illness and to address racial injustice and disparity. We hope that every ICB will continue to prioritise these essential measures so that progress towards equality is sustained.
“It is also vital that funding earmarked for expanding Individual Placement and Support employment services is protected while these life-changing services are being expanded nationwide.
“The Planning Guidance sets out important ambitions to speed up the provision of urgent and crisis care, including tackling long waits in emergency departments for people in a mental health emergency, and shortening lengths of stay in adult acute inpatient services. These are welcome ambitions that will address the unacceptably poor treatment of people with a mental illness when they most urgently need high quality care. We note, however, that this must be funded from existing ICB budgets. Reducing reliance on inpatient services and urgent care without additional funding for community support and alternatives to hospital treatment is going to be exceptionally difficult to achieve in practice.
“We are surprised that NHS mental health trusts are being singled out to make productivity plans this year. While it’s important for all parts of the NHS to maximise the use of their resources and support their staff to work well, improving productivity must not be imposed at the expense of staff wellbeing or patient choice.
“We hope that the forthcoming ten-year health plan will set out a stronger vision for long-term change in the NHS and for the nation’s health. By investing in our mental health in the next spending review, shifting towards prevention and community, and putting equality at the heart of the NHS, a mentally healthier future is still possible.”
