PATIENTS in East Lancashire are set to benefit from an extra £1million in front-line care.

Nationally, all Clinical Commissioning Groups have been mandated to reduce their running costs and East Lancashire CCG’s was £1m.

The money is now available to spend on front-line patient care rather than management costs, it has been confirmed.

Mr Mark Youlton, pictured, chief finance officer at NHS East Lancashire Clinical Commissioning Group, said: “The target reduction of £1m for East Lancashire CCG has been taken directly from the allocated budget the CCG receives.”

The notified allocations for East Lancashire CCG are £499.566m and £515.151m for 2014/15 and 2015/16 respectively.

This places the CCG as one of the largest commissioning organisations in the north of England.

However, the CCG is over target against the recently announced funding formula which will impact on commissioning decisions.

East Lancashire’s CCG is responsible for commissioning healthcare and wellbeing services for the people in East Lancashire, apart from Blackburn and Darwen and Longridge.

The local group reduced the running costs without reducing staff members to not impact on services.

Mr Youlton said: “By being extremely cautious in the level of costs we have incurred in running the CCG, this has allowed us to meet this funding reduction without impacting on staffing levels.”

The group receives a budget from the Department of Health to plan and pay for most local NHS services.

This includes commissioning planned hospital care, rehabilitative care, urgent and emergency care, most community health services and mental health and learning disability services.

Azhar Ali, Lancashire County Council health cabinet member, said he welcomed the saving, but added: “There’s a lack of public funding nationally.”