Every marquee figure cited across the analysis, with its source and the date it was observed. Designed to be machine-readable and citable. DHCW's annual budget reached approximately £200M in 2025–26 against £0.5M of quantified delivered value over five years — 83p per £1,000 invested. NHS Wales has 611,000 patients on waiting lists; 30,000+ are waiting cross-border in England. The Performance and Delivery Committee generated zero corrective actions across eighteen consecutive months. The cost of inaction over five years is £3–10 billion; the cost of reform is £5–15 million.
Every marquee figure cited across the Blueprint analysis, organised for citation. Sources are named; dates are absolute. The page is licensed CC BY 4.0 — reproduce with attribution.
Money
| Figure | What it is | Source | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| ~£200M | DHCW’s annual budget reached this level in 2025–26 | DHCW board financial reports | 2025 |
| ~£600M | Cumulative Welsh Government funding to DHCW over five years | WG allocations to DHCW, 2020–21 to 2024–25 | 2025 |
| £0.5M | Quantified delivered value across the full five-year period — the Finance Director’s own figure | DHCW Finance Director (2022 Finance Director of the Year) | 2025 |
| 83p | Return per £1,000 of Welsh Government funding | Derived from above | 2025 |
| ~£1.25B | DHCW’s vendor contract portfolio value | DHCW board contract registers | 2024–25 |
| £100–150M / yr | Annual direct waste in the current model | This analysis (Cost of Inaction) | May 2026 |
| £3–10B over 5y | Downstream cost to NHS Wales of continuing the current model. Patient harm is a separate ledger and not monetised | This analysis (Cost of Inaction) | May 2026 |
| £5–15M | Cost of implementing the full six-intervention Blueprint | This analysis (The Blueprint) | May 2026 |
People
| Figure | What it is | Source | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,263 | DHCW staff headcount, up from 675 — an 80% increase | DHCW board headcount reports | 2024–25 |
| +80% | DHCW headcount growth while delivery worsened | DHCW board headcount reports | 2024–25 |
| 65% → 68.9% | Staff burnout: 65% reported “frustrated and burnt out” in Jul 2024 survey; 68.9% in Jul 2025 survey. Both figures stripped from published board minutes (Psychological Safety) | DHCW staff survey, board minutes comparison | 2024–2025 |
| 8,684 → 15,846 | Working days lost to sickness — an 82% increase across three years against headcount growth of ~30% (L1: Hiring Trap) | DHCW Annual Reports | 2021–22 to 2024–25 |
| +59% | Long-term sickness across three years. Annual Report 2024-25 names stress and anxiety as the leading cause (Psychological Safety) | DHCW Annual Report 2024-25 | 2024–25 |
| 611,000 | People on NHS Wales waiting lists | NHS Wales statistics | 2025 |
| 30,000+ | Welsh patients waiting cross-border in NHS England because Welsh systems cannot cope | NHS England cross-border activity statistics | 2025 |
| 3.16M | People that depend on NHS Wales | NHS Wales population coverage | 2025 |
Delivery
| Figure | What it is | Source | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 / 9 | DHCW programmes on time | DHCW programme delivery reports (Tragedy of the Commons) | 2024–25 |
| 12+ months | DHCW at Level 3 enhanced monitoring — the first NHS Wales body ever held there. Escalated to Level 4 in 2026 | Welsh Government 5-level escalation framework | March 2025 – 2026 |
| 18 months | The Performance and Delivery Committee generated zero corrective actions across eighteen consecutive months | DHCW PDC minutes (Captured Governance) | May 2024 – May 2025 |
| 2 of 47 | Phase One of Level 4 milestones missed (LIMS and WRISTS) | DHCW board, March 2026 | March 2026 |
| £32.9M + £13.1M | DPIF revenue + capital remaining unallocated as of March 2026 | DHCW board minutes; Accountable Officer letter | March 2026 |
| 8+ years | Time WCCG has run on technology unsupported by its vendor, against repeated technical-staff warnings | DHCW technical risk register (Drift to Low Performance) | Ongoing |
| 3 years | Three consecutive years of major NHS Wales infrastructure failure: July 2024 + June 2025 near-identical data centre cooling failovers; March 2026 PSBA network outage. Same downstream signature; no corrective action visible between them (DHCW Data Centre) | DHCW board minutes Jul 2024 + Jul 2025 + Mar 2026 | 2024–2026 |
Governance
| Figure | What it is | Source | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 / 7 | Donella Meadows’s system traps active at DHCW simultaneously. No documented precedent in public-sector digital delivery | This analysis (Seven Traps) | May 2026 |
| 11 | Reinforcing feedback loops identified, in two clusters — five drive delivery failure, six protect that failure from correction | This analysis (The Diagnosis) | May 2026 |
| 51 | Board approvals without scrutiny documented in the knowledge graph (incl. a £20M Kainos framework the Chair admitted he had not looked at, and a £226M Microsoft Enterprise Agreement passed in a single sentence) | Knowledge graph of DHCW board minutes | 2021–2025 |
| 33 | DHCW directors declaring ‘nil’ on conflict-of-interest declarations while holding undisclosed UWTSD Professor of Practice titles (Thomas 10, Evans 10, Hurle 8, Hall 5) | DHCW board minutes, declarations of interest (Loyalty Selection) | 2021–2025 |
| 4 months | Audit Wales declared “good governance, stable and cohesive board” four months before DHCW was placed under Level 3 escalation | Audit Wales structured assessment, November 2024 | November 2024 |
| 3 successive | NHS Wales CEOs drawn from a single health board (ABUHB), via Goodall and Paget | Public NHS Wales appointments record (Loyalty Selection) | 2018–2024 |
| December 2020 | Three executive directors received UWTSD Professor of Practice titles — four months before DHCW’s founding board met | UWTSD honorary appointment register | December 2020 |
Cited statements (verbatim)
“We’ve always struggled because it’s one-year funding. We should have worked it out by now, surely.” — Ruth Glazzard (CFO), DHCW board, March 2026.
“This persistent ambiguity, let’s call it, which we usually phrase as ‘we need to clarify roles and responsibilities’… PDC is an oversight and assurance function, not a programme management function.” — Ifan Evans, Performance and Delivery Committee, 46 months after DHCW’s founding.
“Government was asking… why then are those programs rated red amber?” — Ifan Evans on Welsh Government pressure to soften RAG ratings, PDC November 2024.
“I should have looked. I don’t know how these appear on our website as contracts.” — DHCW Chair, on the £20M Kainos framework approved without scrutiny.
“Complex, data-heavy, burdensome, lacks transparency and does not drive improvement.” — Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Miles, 2026, publicly describing the Welsh Government 5-level escalation framework — while continuing to operate it.
How to cite
Bergman, R. (2026). Facts — A Blueprint for World-Class Digital NHS in Wales. https://bluenhs.org/facts/
CC BY 4.0. Free to reproduce, share, summarise, and adapt with attribution.