Corporate report

UKHSA Advisory Board: Finance Report

Updated 28 January 2025

Title of paper: Finance Report

Date: January 2025

Sponsor: Luke Heath

1. Purpose of the paper

This paper gives an overview of the UK Health Security Agency’s finances as at month nine of Financial Year 2024-25 (the end of December 2024).

2. Recommendations

The Advisory Board is asked to note UKHSA’s financial position.

3. Summary of 2024-25 financial performance (at end of December)

The table below shows resource and capital departmental expenditure limits (RDEL and CDEL) for 2024 to 2025, split by the parts of:

• core agency costs
• non-COVID-19 vaccines and countermeasures and
• the COVID Vaccine Unit (CVU) Core agency costs;

It shows the provisional outturn for the 12 months April 24 to March 25.

Table 1. Month 9 resource departmental expenditure limits (RDEL) and capital departmental expenditure limits (CDEL)

	Budget	Actual	Variance
Core RDEL	321,067	322,769	(1,703)
NBN RDEL	5,827	5,827	(0)
ODA RDEL	10,381	10,381	0
CVU RDEL	695,499	845,552	(150,053)
VCR RDEL	403,542	403,542	0
Core CDEL	58,509	42,050	16,459
NBN CDEL	0	5,917	(5,917)
ODA CDEL	0	0	0
CVU CDEL	(112,262)	(138,928)	26,666
VCR CDEL	14,707	14,707	0
UKHSA total resource	1,436,316	1,588,071	(151,755)
UKHSA total capital	(39,046)	(76,253)	37,207
UKHSA total	1,397,270	1,511,818	(114,548)

Table 2: Full year resource departmental expenditure limits (RDEL) and capital departmental expenditure limits (CDEL)

	Budget	Actual	Variance
Core RDEL	426,338	429,924	(3,586)
NBN RDEL	8,730	8,402	328
ODA RDEL	16,799	16,799	0
CVU RDEL	928,000	894,890	33,110
VCR RDEL	660,628	660,628	0
Core CDEL	93,898	93,898	0
NBN CDEL	8,710	8,710	0
ODA CDEL	2,885	2,885	0
CVU CDEL	(118,670)	(145,336)	26,666
VCR CDEL	87,937	87,937	0
UKHSA total resource	2,040,495	2,010,644	29,852
UKHSA total capital	74,760	48,094	26,666
UKHSA total	2,115,255	2,058,738	56,518

3.1 Core Resource budget

Agreement was reached with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to provide £18.8million of additional budget to manage the pressures which emerged during the year in relation to public sector pay awards and the expected costs of the SCS restructure. The Executive Committee have managed down the other operational pressures and demands associated with maintaining robust cyber security and responses to both H5N1 and Mpox.

The current forecast pressure still has savings targets which need to be agreed and implemented in the final quarter. £3.3million of the pressure has emerged due to the change in fiscal rules which prevents any further switches from capital to resource budget. This switch had been agreed with DHSC as spend on the replacement laboratory site at Harlow could not be capitalised in year but is unavoidable. We are looking to manage the pressure through emerging opportunities in the final quarter.

3.2 Core Capital budget

Capital spend has an even profile in the year. While this is currently behind plan we expect, as in previous years, spend from major projects to be in the final quarter of the year and deliver to plan. With the change in fiscal rules there was an opportunity to access health group capital which could be delivered in year. Additional budget was received to deliver antimicrobial resistance systems upgrades, Cyber compliance and Technology network improvements.

3.3 Covid Vaccine Unit Resource and Capital budget

The Covid Vaccine Unit shows an underspend on resource budget of £33million. This was based on the ministerial direction that the latest vaccine should be used for the Spring and Autumn 2025 campaigns. After a review of the affordability at a health group level the decision has been made to use existing stock in Spring 2025 which will result in the current impairment of inventory held being reversed. This will reduce the current forecast spend by £220million. In addition to this change, NHS England have confirmed that the Spring 2025 campaign will commence on 1st April. This is two weeks ahead of the current assumptions and will result in more vaccines drawn in the current financial year which is estimated between £45million to £60million. The impact of these two decisions will be to increase the underspend in the current year to between £193million to £208million.

The capital credit forecast is generated by purchases from contracts agreed in the previous financial year and delivered in 2024-25.

3.4 Vaccines and countermeasures resource and capital budget

This budget is wholly funded based on actual expenditure by DHSC.

4. Annual Accounts 2023-24

The 2023-24 Annual Report and Accounts were laid before parliament on 16th December 2024. The key areas of challenge identified during the audit were completed with the accounts team working at pace with the National Audit Office (NAO) to meet the pre-Christmas deadline.

The Annual Report and Accounts have a qualified, limited scope audit opinion by the NAO. While this is still not an unqualified opinion, which would not have been possible following the prior year disclaimed view, it is the best outcome that could have been achieved at this stage. There was intense scrutiny by NAO with over 2,000 transactions and supporting evidence sampled to inform their opinion.

Further work is continuing to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of record keeping and continue the trajectory towards a fully clean audit opinion. A month nine draft set of accounts will be produced for 2024-25 to assist in addressing continued areas for approvement.

Luke Heath

Director, Finance, Performance, Risk & Assurance

January 2025