The Nicholson challenge keeps NHS law and regulations as they have been prior to the Health And Social Care Bill's passage, but asks staff and administrators to find these "savings" within those present parameters nevertheless.
Even a late-March 2012 news article dealing with the risk register of the Health and Social Care Bill 2011 found fit to mention a few lines about the Nicholson Challenge's £20bn target, mentioning that in the 2010-dated risk register, "Civil servants ... rate highly the danger that the £20bn savings may not materialise as managers lose focus and ... quality of patient care suffers", even though "Ministers [today in 2012 say] that a report to be published on Tuesday shows that the NHS is on course to meet the so called "Nicholson challenge" to save £20bn over the course of this parliament.
[5] The BBC released a 3 February 2012 article stating that twelve London hospital trusts were already "not financially viable" to withstand the pressures of current cost-saving measures plus the ultimate goals cited by the Nicholson Challenge.
Defenders of the "challenge", such as James Ball of The Daily Telegraph, point out that health service finance directors had already been fully aware, since the summer of 2009, of the kind of constraints that would have to be dealt with because of the UK deficit crisis.
Nicholson first signalled his challenge in June 2009 while the UK government was under the previous administration, that of Gordon Brown and the policy received the full support of the then Secretary of State Andy Burnham.