THE St Helens Clinical Commissioning Group insists a planned reduction in its mental health funding for this year will not result in a decline in its level of service.

Reports in the national media highlighted St Helens CCG as one of five areas to have spent less on mental health for 2017/18 than the previous year.

Sefton, Scarborough, the Isle of Wight and Walsall were other CCGs identified as lowering spending.

Figures from a Freedom of Information request showed that more than £500,000 less was being spent by the St Helens CCG with £22,872,000 being allocated for 2017/18, compared with £23,460,149 the previous year.

However, a spokesperson for NHS St Helens CCG said the reduction was partly the result of "historic funding issues" in which it had "cross subsidised mental health activity attributable to other neighbouring CCG’s".

In a statement, the spokesperson said: “The CCG recognises that parity of esteem requires the CCG to invest in mental health proportionate to the percentage of growth funding received.

"For 2017-18 St Helens CCG has invested in mental health services up to the STP growth assumptions of 1.93 per cent.

"During 2016-17 it was identified that through historic funding issues St Helens CCG had cross subsidised mental health activity attributable to other neighbouring CCG’s.

"There was therefore an agreed re-basing of the St Helens CCG share of the mental health contract value with our main mental health provider resulting in a reduction in funding from St Helens CCG of £500,000 but with neighbouring commissioners correctly adding the same sum to their contracts.

"The net impact on overall mental health commissioning spend with the provider was therefore neutral and there was no impact on the level of service provided to patients."

They added: "A further issue is that the CCG had funded some non-recurrent corporate IT costs for its main mental health provider in 2016-17 which are not planned for in 2017-18, again this has no impact on the level of mental health services provided to patients in St Helens but does impact on year to year expenditure comparisons

"The CCG’s core allocation growth is 2% for both 2017/18 and 2018/19.”

Undoing for the year 2018/19 is set to increase to £23,558,000.