Streeting announces 43 neighbourhood pilots of which GPs will be ‘cornerstone’

Health secretary Wes Streeting has announced the 43 areas that have been chosen to pilot the new neighbourhood health service – saying that GPs will be their ‘cornerstone’.

It comes after some areas have already appointed hospital trusts, rather than GPs, to lead neighbourhood services in their area.

Speaking this week at a conference hosted by the King’s Fund, Mr Streeting said the ‘wave one’ sites will cover areas including more than a fifth of the population (see box below).

Backed by £10m in funding, they begin going live this week ‘with the ambition to scale up more services over the course of the next year’, the Government said.

According to the health secretary, these areas ‘are the ones best placed to provide immediate improvements to patients where the need is greatest’. 

Mr Streeting said: ‘With GPs as the cornerstone, [the pilot areas] will act as test beds for the new financial flows and primary care contracts we described in the 10 year plan. 

‘Starting in the most deprived parts of the country, vulnerable patients with multiple long-term conditions will get more joined-up services closer to home and avoid the frustration caused by a maze of referrals.’

Describing the services as a ‘big departure’ from previous health policy, Mr Streeting hailed the possibility ‘that patients can see their GP and specialist consultants in the same building, often on the same day’. cover areas including more than a fifth of the population.

Meanwhile, NHS England national medical director Dr Claire Fuller and Department of Health and Social Care second permanent secretary Tom Riordan have written to the selected sites to confirm next steps.

The letter said: ‘We had an overwhelming response to the programme and received 141 applications (approximately 83% of the number of Places in England).

‘It has been encouraging to see so many good examples of neighbourhood working across the country and commitment to go further backed by senior leaders across health, care, the voluntary and community sector and their wider partners.’

It confirmed that the sites will be offered:

• Opportunity ‘to help shape enablers’ such as funding flows
• A national coach’to work with neighbourhood teams
• Access to ‘subject experts’
• Three face-to-face regional learning workshops
• Online support (practical tools, case studies and real-time learning)
• A knowledge hub with themed areas for peer-to-peer learning (currently in development)
• Data and evaluation workshops to support baseline development and outcome tracking
• A ‘knowledge management centre’ to share and access insights from across the country

But GPs have raised concern about whether general practice will be leading on the new neighbourhood project.

BMA leaders are preparing to ‘debate the risk of the 10-year plan to the medical profession at large’ and whether the organisation should re-enter a formal dispute with the Government. 

The union’s council has called a special representative meeting, which will be held on Sunday (14 September) and will be attended by Mr Streeting.

The agenda for the meeting includes a motion that ‘condemns and opposes’ the plan ‘as it is currently written’, and demands support for the BMA GP committee England in re-entering dispute with the Government.

It also demands that no general practice contracts beyond those already held by trusts be permitted to be transferred to trusts, with general practice and secondary care ‘each respecting the contracts and expertise of each other’.

A version of this article was first published by our sister title Pulse