The transition from the National Cost Collection (NCC) to the Local Cost Collection (LCC) represents an important step towards more timely and actionable costing information for the NHS. As NHS England continues to develop the LCC model, there is an opportunity for NHS England, trusts and suppliers to shape a collection process that delivers valuable national insight while remaining practical and sustainable for trusts.
In this blog, we share LOGEX's perspective on some of the key considerations for the future development of the Local Cost Collection. Based on our experience supporting NHS organisations with costing and reporting, we believe the success of the LCC will depend on a simple principle: costing collections should follow the natural flow of data rather than require trusts and suppliers to create additional records, classifications or processes solely for reporting purposes.
We see five priorities.
1. Greater transparency
Guidance, supporting materials and Costing Expert Working Group (CEWG) decisions should be openly accessible, with opportunities for suppliers and stakeholders to review proposed changes before implementation. Greater transparency helps ensure that new requirements are practical and can be adopted consistently across the NHS.
2. Simpler submissions
As collections become more frequent, submission requirements should be simpler than those of the annual NCC. Flexible and human-readable approaches can reduce implementation effort and minimise unnecessary data transformation and mapping activities.
3. Better alignment with source data
Trusts already submit large volumes of information through mandated datasets such as SUS, MHSDS and CSDS. Wherever possible, LCC requirements should build on these existing sources rather than require organisations to recreate information through additional processing steps.
4. Consistent national approaches
Areas such as critical care, rehabilitation, high-cost drugs and community currencies require clear and consistent national decisions. This is essential to ensure that costing information remains comparable across organisations.
5. Practical validation
Validation processes should be transparent, accessible and straightforward for trusts and suppliers to test and resolve. This will help improve data quality without creating unnecessary administrative burden.
For the LCC to succeed, trusts must be able to produce high-quality costing data as part of their normal costing processes, rather than introducing additional steps solely to meet collection requirements.
Achieving that balance will help ensure that the Local Cost Collection delivers both meaningful national insight and a sustainable workload for local organisations.