Change in legal basis for mandatory data submission to the NHS Spend Comparison Service letter

To:

NHS trusts and foundation trusts

• heads of procurement
• directors of finance

Integrated care systems

• procurement leads

Dear colleagues,

Change in legal basis for mandatory data submission to the NHS Spend Comparison Service

The NHS Spend Comparison Service (SCS) is a free-to-use online tool for NHS procurement teams to compare price and spend data, helping to identify potential savings, leverage the market and collaborate to purchase goods and services. Most NHS trusts and foundation trusts (NHS providers) already submit data to the NHS Spend Comparison Service.

• It enables benchmarking of products and prices paid, direct from supplier and through different supply routes, to understand the most cost-effective supply route to achieve savings and avert cost pressures.
• This approach helps providers to identify total and pareto spend by normalised supplier and category, to rationalise spend or disaggregate where relevant.
• Providers can more easily identify and view efficiency opportunities across expenditure, and in doing so contributes to the financial sustainability of the NHS.

• If you are a customer of NHS NEP Cloud or NHS Shared Business Services, no further action is required. NHS England automatically receives the requisite data and integrates this on your behalf.
• If you are not a customer of the above shared service and system providers, please submit your data through the Strategic Data Collection Service (SDCS), on a monthly basis or more frequently.
• Where providers are making inconsistent submissions, separate communications will be sent directly to their heads of procurement and directors of finance to support the improvement of the national dataset.
• Further commercial datasets (for example catalogue data, where this is held) will need to be submitted as part of an expanded scope later in financial year 2024/25. Further communication will follow separately later.

• More information on the SCS can be viewed on the NHS England website.
• If you do not have an SCS account, please submit an online access request.
• If you have an account, you can access the SCS with your organisational Microsoft user account and password.
• Reference to SCS data collections as approved collections under the NHS Standard Contract.

The NHS Commercial team can be contacted via email at [email protected], should you have any questions.

Thank you for your continued support.

Yours sincerely,

Jacqui Rock
Chief Commercial Officer
NHS England