Key information
Decision type: Assistant Director
Reference code: ADD2067
Date signed:
Decision by: Amanda Coyle, Interim Assistant Director, Health and Communities
Executive summary
The Health Team is requesting additional funding for its policy development programme for 2016/17. The request is for £48,700 of funding and the breakdown is set out below:
1. Sustainability and Transformation plan analysis - £45,000
2. Policy development events - £3,700
The Sustainability and Transformation Plan analysis is intended to provide the Mayor and GLA with a platform from which they can adopt a position on the NHS change programme. This will in part meet the Mayor’s manifesto commitments around “Championing and Challenging” the NHS.
The policy development funding is to support several miscellaneous items including for the forthcoming health inequalities strategy and more general health team development.
Decision
That the Assistant Director of Health and Communities approves:
1. Sustainability and Transformation plan analysis - £45,000
2. Policy development events - £3,700
Part 1: Non-confidential facts and advice
These requests follow from the Health Team’s central programme request agreed in May 2015:
1. Sustainability and Transformation+n plan (STP) analysis - £45,000
The NHS is currently developing STPs to bridge a significant finance gap and to develop and deliver a health and care system that is sustainable over the longer term. It is expected that these STPs will recommend significant changes to NHS services.
An analysis is required to support the GLA in our understanding of the changes being proposed and in order to respond effectively to matters arising from the NHS’s STP process.
2. Policy development events - £3,700
Various miscellaneous items including support for the development of the Health Inequalities Strategy publication and other items such as stakeholder meeting catering
1. Sustainability and Transformation plan analysis
As noted above, we expect the NHS STP process to recommend significant NHS service changes, something which will impact on many patients in London in addition to their friends, family, carers and the significant number of NHS and social care employees working in the capital.
NHS service changes almost always attract significant media and stakeholder interest, and as such it is something the public will expect the Mayor to have a policy position on.
In his election manifesto, the Mayor said that he would:
“Be a champion for London’s NHS…campaigning alongside patients and health workers and all NHS supporters against any service closures or reconfigurations without proper consultation.”
The STP process provides the first clear opportunity to do this for the Mayor to demonstrate “leadership in healthcare”.
Therefore we would like to commission independent external advice on the content of each of the five STPs affecting London. Full terms of reference will be developed prior to the commission with clear expectations about the product required. However, we anticipate the analysis will consider and provide expert views about:
• clinical models,
• financial assumptions,
• capacity issues, and
• communication and engagement (clinical leadership, consultation etc).
The objectives of the work are to enable the GLA to identify the areas within each STP which the Mayor may wish highlight as part of his commitment to “champion and challenge” the NHS, and to enable the GLA to establish a platform from which the Mayor can demonstrate this “leadership in heath”.
2. Policy development events
This is to cover a number of minor programme costs (previously identified but which hadn’t to date been realised) in addition to Team development processes.
All the work of the GLA Health Team is predicated around the need to address health inequalities, including leading the implementation of the Mayor’s Health Inequalities Strategy. Health inequalities are experienced by Londoners with the protected characteristics of the Equalities Act and between other groups of Londoners.
The health team actively considers the impact of its work on health inequalities (including the protected characteristics) and works with a range of other teams within the GLA to help them do the same.
4.1 The estimated cost of this initiative is £48,700 and will be funded from the C&I ‘Minor Programmes’ budget for 2016-17. £22,000 will be redirected from the previously approved ‘Alcohol harm reduction’ project that has not been utilised (ADD2046), with the balance of £26,700 being drawn-down directly from the remaining balance of the Minor Programme budget.
4.2 Any changes to this proposal, including budgetary implications will be subject to further approval via the Authority’s decision-making process. All appropriate budget adjustments will be made.
Sustainability and Transformation plan (STP) analysis
Signed decision document
ADD2067 Health Team Programme budget (signed) PDF