NHS organisations rely heavily on savings schemes to meet their statutory duty to achieve financial balance. Savings are achieved in several different ways, including stopping certain activities, reducing expenditure, and reshaping services to deliver care more efficiently.

NHS Board Members have an important role to play in overseeing the cost savings arrangements of their organisations. This checklist has been developed to set out some of the key questions NHS Board Members should be asking to obtain assurance that their organisations have effective arrangements in place to support the identification, delivery and monitoring of sustainable cost savings.