HEALTH officials will bid for £37.5m of funding, despite previously saying Government targets attached to the cash could not be met.

Oxfordshire County Council and Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group will put together a joint bid for funding from the Better Care Fund.

The money will be used to reduce the number of elderly people admitted to care homes and to A&E, as well as tackle bed blocking.

Yesterday councillors met at County Hall to debate the plan, where they agreed to make a bid to NHS England.

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The council first submitted its plan in April 2014 but the Department of Health asked for all proposals to be updated after concerns were raised about the fund’s impact on NHS services.

The DoH said national targets, including reducing emergency admissions by 3.5 per cent, had to be met when submitting the proposals.

Last year the county council and OCCG said meeting these targets was impossible and instead submitted an overview paper detailing challenges in the county, while still asking for funding.

A report last September on the bid by both the county council and OCCG said: “Given that admissions have increased significantly this year it is wholly unrealistic to commit to that national expectation at this point in time.”

Oxfordshire was one of five areas across the country which did not have its application approved and was told to produce a fully developed plan by January 9.

The money made available by the Better Care Fund is not new and is instead reallocated from within the health and social care system. If a submitted plan is approved, work will continue to devise full implementation plans by April and NHS England will decide how to carry out the scheme across the country.


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