​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Individual Funding Requests

Lambeth Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is awarded a sum of money by the Government each year to commission healthcare within the remit of the CCG for those registered with doctors surgeries in the borough. Our role is to ensure that we buy the best healthcare services for our patients, providing value for money and improving health and wellbeing.

Almost all therapies and treatments within the remit of the CCG are commissioned from a range of providers who treat our patients. However healthcare continually evolves, with new treatments becoming available and some existing treatment being seen as not appropriate to be offered on the NHS.  The CCG accepts individual funding requests (IFRs) to allow individual decisions to be made about treatments and therapies (within the CCG remit) which are not currently commissioned, either because they are new or because they have been decommissioned.

The IFR allows consideration, on an individual patient basis for the treatment requested.

Making an individual funding request for medical treatment on your behalf 

Your GP or hospital consultant is able to make an individual funding request on your behalf for medical treatment that is not currently commissioned in Lambeth. Requests go to the Individual Funding Requests Team at NHS NEL Commissioning Support Unit. The following are considered on a case-by-case basis:

• medical treatments that are new, novel, developing or unproven and are not normally available for any patients in England 
• medical treatments that are provided by us in very specific clinical circumstances and not all patients with the medical condition meet these criteria.

When making your individual funding request application, your doctor or hospital consultant will need to provide evidence of why they feel your request has exceptional clinical circumstances. We understand this may be difficult to define for each patient and so we follow the NHS policy which sets out very clearly how we assess this and how our decisions are made. 

You will normally hear back within 20 working days of your individual funding request application being received to let you know what will happen next. 

Sometimes, your doctor will be asked for more information and we ask them to provide this as quickly as possible.

Further information

Correspondence should be sent to:  

IFR Team
NHS NEL Support Unit
3rd Floor
1 Lower Marsh
Waterloo
SE1  7NT

How to contact us

t: 020 3049 4154
e: nelcsu.selifr@nhs.net

Page updated 23.10.17