NHS England has developed a shorter- form version of the NHS Standard Contract

A consultation on this shorter-form NHS Standard Contract 2016/17 has now been published on the NHS Standard Contract 2016/17 webpage. Stakeholders are asked to submit comments to england.contractsengagement@nhs.net by Friday 16 March 2016. 

The final shorter-form Contract will be published in final version shortly afterwards, for use during 2016/17.

NHS England also welcomes comments on any aspect of the draft shorter-form Contract, and on the draft NHS shorter-from Contract User Guide.

Please see the following documents which have now been published:

•    NHS Standard Contract 2016/17 (shorter form) (draft for consultation) (3 documents in total)

•    Shorter-form NHS Standard Contract for 2016/17: Draft user guide

•    Draft shorter-form NHS Standard Contract for 2016/17: A consultation

The consultation document describes how NHS England has developed the draft shorter-form Contract, and asks a number of specific questions. 

The draft user guide describes how the shorter-form Contract should be completed and managed. 

The shorter-form Contract may be used for services commencing from 1 April 2016, and is about a third of the length of the existing full-length Contract, and is much simpler and less burdensome to use.

There will have the opportunity to update and improve the Contract again for 2017/18 – so, once the Contract is in use after April 2016, we will be glad to receive any comments about how it is working in practice.