A review conducted for the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CCG into the collapse of the Uniting Care contract has been published.

The report makes clear that the Special Projects Team and Department of Health have serious questions to answer. 

The report highlights that the tendering process was both new and highly complex showing the need for timely, comprehensive and accurate Department of Health guidance. However, it is clear that the Special Projects Team failed to ensure the CCG understood key parts of the contract and that they did not provide the right advice on a number of occasions.

Crucially when Uniting Care was established, the Special Projects Team failed to spot the problems associated with it being set up as a Limited Liability Partnership. Today’s report makes clear the Special Projects Team failed to mention this changed legal entity in the main narrative of their “contract evaluation report”. 

Daniel Zeichner MP said: “This report shines a light on the complexity of the process that Andrew Lansley’s 2012 Health and Social Care Act has forced our health services through.

It demonstrates a series of failures by the Department of Health’s Special Projects Team to provide the right advice and support.

What it doesn’t say is the extent to which Ministers were involved. This fiasco has cost Cambridgeshire patients £10 million and ministers now need to come clean, apologise for their Department’s mistakes, and make up the shortfall to patients in Cambridge and Cambridgeshire.”