Funding for service integration
The Better Care Fund (BCF) is the national policy driving forward the integration of health and social care in England. The BCF requires integrated care boards (formerly NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs)) and local authorities to make joint plans and pool budgets for the purposes of integrated care, providing a context in which they can work together, as partners, towards shared objectives.
	The Act puts in place stand-alone powers for directions to be given to NHS England and to integrated care boards to use a specified sum of their financial allocation for the purposes of service integration, known as the BCF, which does not rely on the NHS mandate.
	Previously, the legal basis for the allocation of the BCF relied on ministers setting a requirement each year in the NHS mandate to ringfence funding from commissioners’ budgets.
	A stand-alone power ensures that the BCF continues to function as it previously did should mandates be set on anything other than a financial year basis. It is a technical change and will not have any impact on the operation or policy intention of the BCF.