{ "title": "DHCW in Numbers — bluenhs.org facts dataset", "license": "CC BY 4.0", "canonical": "https://bluenhs.org/facts/", "last_verified": "2026-07-30", "facts": [ { "name": "DHCW annual budget (2025–26)", "statement": "DHCW's annual budget reached approximately £200M in 2025–26.", "source": "DHCW board financial reports", "date": "2025", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/blueprint/cost-of-inaction/" }, { "name": "Cumulative WG funding to DHCW", "statement": "Cumulative Welsh Government funding to DHCW exceeded £600M over five years.", "source": "Welsh Government allocations to DHCW, 2020–21 to 2024–25", "date": "2025", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/blueprint/cost-of-inaction/" }, { "name": "Quantified delivered value", "statement": "DHCW's Finance Director quantified £0.5M of delivered value across the full five-year period — the Finance Director's own figure, not the analysis's.", "source": "DHCW Finance Director (PAC, January 2026)", "date": "2025", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/blueprint/cost-of-inaction/" }, { "name": "Return per £1,000 invested", "statement": "DHCW returned 83p of quantified value per £1,000 of Welsh Government funding.", "source": "Derived from DHCW Finance Director's quantification", "date": "2025", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/" }, { "name": "DHCW headcount", "statement": "DHCW grew from 675 staff to approximately 1,263 — an increase of 80% — while delivery worsened.", "source": "DHCW board headcount reports", "date": "2024–25", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/diagnosis/l1-hiring-trap/" }, { "name": "NHS Wales waiting list", "statement": "611,000 people are on NHS Wales waiting lists.", "source": "NHS Wales statistics", "date": "2025", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/" }, { "name": "Welsh patients waiting cross-border", "statement": "More than 30,000 Welsh patients are waiting in NHS England because Welsh systems cannot cope.", "source": "NHS England cross-border activity statistics", "date": "2025", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/" }, { "name": "Programmes on time", "statement": "Of the nine programmes DHCW had in-flight, zero were on time.", "source": "DHCW programme delivery reports", "date": "2024–25", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/traps/tragedy-of-the-commons/" }, { "name": "PDC corrective actions", "statement": "The Performance and Delivery Committee generated zero corrective actions across eighteen consecutive months (May 2024 – May 2025), even after Welsh Government installed Olivia Shoraks as a permanent observer.", "source": "DHCW Performance and Delivery Committee minutes", "date": "May 2024 – May 2025", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/diagnosis/l11-oversight-obstruction/" }, { "name": "Months at Level 3", "statement": "DHCW spent more than twelve months at Welsh Government Level 3 enhanced monitoring with no de-escalation. In 2026, DHCW was escalated to Level 4 Targeted Intervention.", "source": "Welsh Government 5-level NHS escalation framework", "date": "March 2025 – 2026", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/diagnosis/l11-oversight-obstruction/" }, { "name": "Audit Wales 'good governance' assessment", "statement": "Audit Wales issued a 'good governance, stable and cohesive board' assessment in November 2024 — four months before DHCW was placed under Level 3 escalation.", "source": "Audit Wales structured assessment, November 2024", "date": "November 2024", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/diagnosis/l11-oversight-obstruction/" }, { "name": "Meadows system traps active", "statement": "All seven of Donella Meadows's system trap archetypes are active at DHCW simultaneously. No documented precedent in public-sector digital delivery.", "source": "This analysis, applying Meadows's Thinking in Systems", "date": "May 2026", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/traps/" }, { "name": "Reinforcing feedback loops", "statement": "Eleven reinforcing feedback loops identified at DHCW, in two clusters: five drive delivery failure, six protect that failure from correction.", "source": "This analysis", "date": "May 2026", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/diagnosis/" }, { "name": "Vendor portfolio value", "statement": "DHCW manages a vendor contract portfolio valued at approximately £1.25 billion.", "source": "DHCW board contract registers", "date": "2024–25", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/diagnosis/l5-vendor-dependency-spiral/" }, { "name": "Annual direct waste", "statement": "Direct waste at DHCW runs at approximately £100–150M per year.", "source": "This analysis", "date": "May 2026", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/blueprint/cost-of-inaction/" }, { "name": "Five-year downstream NHS Wales cost", "statement": "The downstream cost to NHS Wales of continuing the current model is £3–10 billion over five years. Patient harm is treated as a separate ledger and not monetised.", "source": "This analysis", "date": "May 2026", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/blueprint/cost-of-inaction/" }, { "name": "Cost of reform", "statement": "The full six-intervention Blueprint is costed at £5–15M to implement.", "source": "This analysis", "date": "May 2026", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/blueprint/" }, { "name": "Cabinet Secretary on the framework", "statement": "In 2026, the Cabinet Secretary publicly described the Welsh Government 5-level escalation framework as 'complex, data-heavy, burdensome, lacks transparency and does not drive improvement' — while continuing to operate it.", "source": "Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Miles, 2026", "date": "2026", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/diagnosis/l11-oversight-obstruction/" }, { "name": "Staff burnout trajectory", "statement": "65% of DHCW staff reported being 'frustrated and burnt out' or close to it in the July 2024 staff survey; by July 2025 the figure had risen to 68.9%. Both the 65% figure and the year-on-year increase were stripped from the published board minutes.", "source": "DHCW staff survey 2024 and 2025; DHCW board minutes comparison", "date": "2024–2025", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/blueprint/psychological-safety/" }, { "name": "Sickness — total working days lost", "statement": "Working days lost to sickness at DHCW rose from 8,684 in 2021–22 to 15,846 in 2024–25 — an 82% increase across three years, against headcount growth of approximately 30%.", "source": "DHCW Annual Reports 2021–22 to 2024–25", "date": "2021–22 to 2024–25", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/diagnosis/l1-hiring-trap/" }, { "name": "Long-term sickness — driver", "statement": "Long-term sickness at DHCW rose 59% across three years. The Annual Report 2024–25 names stress and anxiety as the leading cause of sickness absence.", "source": "DHCW Annual Report 2024–25", "date": "2024–25", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/blueprint/psychological-safety/" }, { "name": "Three-year infrastructure failure pattern", "statement": "Three consecutive years of major infrastructure failure affecting NHS Wales: June 2024 — DHCW data centre cooling failure (29 services offline, restored within six hours, resolution-time SLAs breached; DHCW's worst availability month of the year); June 2025 — near-identical recurrence at the same data centre, both cooling systems failing, with full resilience not restored for three days; March 2026 — PSBA network outage taking O365, EPMA, RISP, and radiology offline simultaneously across all NHS Wales for hours. The CEO's 'never event' characterisation of the 2025 recurrence and the Executive Director of Operations's prior-incident admission were both erased from the published minutes.", "source": "DHCW IOPR May–June 2024 (SHA Board 25 Jul 2024); DHCW board minutes Jul 2025 + Mar 2026", "date": "2024–2026", "appearance": "https://bluenhs.org/systems/data-centre/" } ] }