Multi-year funding tied to the programme, not the organisation. Capital and revenue separated. Continuity protection across financial-year boundaries. Health-board cycle alignment so the funder, the programme, and the receiver operate on compatible timelines. Removes the structural condition that lets leadership start everything and finish nothing — when funding can no longer be re-allocated between programmes mid-year, the act of starting becomes a binding commitment.
Multi-year funding tied to the programme, not the organisation. Don’t give DHCW a 3-year budget — give the Electronic Prescribing programme a 3-year budget with external delivery milestones. If DHCW leadership is replaced, the programme continues with new leadership and the same funding.
This prevents leadership from using multi-year funding as a shield while giving programmes the continuity they need.
Programme funding envelopes
Each priority programme — selected under Portfolio Ruthlessness — receives a three-year funding envelope from the start of its delivery phase. Release is milestone-based, against externally-validated milestones, not against self-reported “green” status. The 550-milestones-with-zero-confidence-scoring pattern documented at L2 is the precedent the new structure replaces: every milestone in the envelope carries a confidence score, an independent reviewer, and a release condition.
Capital and revenue, separated
Capital allocations are granted at programme inception, not annually re-confirmed. The November 2025 refusal of capital funding for e-referrals and the integration hub — while milestones requiring those systems remained on the books — is the structural failure mode this addresses. Capital and revenue follow different cycles for a reason; aligning them under a single annual commissioning rhythm pretends they are the same thing, and the pretence breaks every year.
Continuity protection
Funding is owned by the programme, not by the executive personalities running it. Leadership change at DHCW does not interrupt programme funding. The programme’s accountable senior responsible owner — typically a clinical director embedded in a health board under Flip the Model — has signing authority over draw-down within the envelope. DHCW’s successor body has visibility but not veto. Continuity also protects staff: annual uncertainty drives turnover (see L3: The Funding Uncertainty Trap), which depletes institutional knowledge and forces remaining staff into the overload chain documented at L1: The Hiring Trap — the mechanism producing the 65% → 68.9% burnout trajectory and the 82% rise in stress-driven sickness. Funding design is a staff-welfare instrument.
Health-board cycle alignment
Welsh Government planning cycles align with health-board Integrated Medium-Term Plan (IMTP) cycles. Currently they do not — which means a health board commits to operational support for a national programme based on funding visibility DHCW does not yet have. Funding letters not confirmed until 25% through the financial year (July 2022) is the documented precedent. The new design: WG indicative settlements are issued before health-board IMTP submission deadlines, not after them.
What this intervention is NOT
This intervention is not a three-year envelope to the organisation. That becomes a shield against accountability — the kind of shield Glazzard implicitly identified, five years in: “We’ve always struggled because it’s one-year funding. We should have worked it out by now, surely.” Multi-year funding to the organisation produces multi-year insulation. Multi-year funding to programmes, with externally-validated milestones, produces multi-year continuity for delivery.
The test of the design: if DHCW leadership change disrupts programme funding, the design has failed. Funding belongs to the work, not to the leadership.
How this relates to Reform the Funder
This intervention solves the cadence — annual cycles to multi-year envelopes, organisation to programme. Reform the Funder addresses the broader funder behaviour: capital and revenue coherence, RAG honesty, milestone realism, remit-letter discipline, co-author accountability. The two are complementary. Multi-year programme envelopes without RAG honesty produce well-funded programmes that are still being pressured to mark slipping milestones green. Both interventions are needed.
This intervention dismantles L3: The Funding Uncertainty Trap.