In March 2015, we surveyed NHS mental health foundation trusts and trusts to find out whether commissioners are planning to meet the requirement in the planning guidance to increase their real term investment in mental health services. We found that:

• The majority of respondents (53 per cent) were not confident that their commissioners would meet the planning guidance requirement on funding.
• Providers were more confident that they were going to receive additional investment from clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) than from NHS England local area teams.
• The majority of respondents (63 per cent) were confident that their commissioners would offset the tariff deflator by 0.35 per cent to support the implementation of mental health access targets.
• Only five per cent of respondents were planning to move to cost and volume contracts (away from block contracts) for 2015/16 for the majority of their services.

This briefing provides a more detailed overview of these survey results.