HANSARD
Integrated Care Boards: Running Costs and Boundary Alignment with Strategic Authorities
- Today I am updating the House on progress towards reducing the running costs of integrated care boards and the Government’s ambition to align the boundaries of integrated care boards and strategic authorities where feasible.We have committed to reducing the running costs of ICBs and to redirect this funding to frontline services. To deliver this, our “10 Year Health Plan” sets out that ICBs must focus on their role as strategic commissioners, ensuring the best possible value in securing local services that improve population health and reduce inequalities.In directing ICBs to focus on strategic commissioning, we are reducing duplication of functions that are undertaken by other NHS organisations such as performance management and assurance, freeing up vital resources.To deliver a reduction in running costs in this financial year, a number of ICBs will cluster together to share leadership and functions; clustering ICBs remain legally separate organisations with their own financial allocations. It will mean that during this financial year the number of ICB senior leadership teams will go from 42 to 26.In the longer term, there will be fewer, larger ICBs enabling them to harness a shared budget of sufficient size to improve efficiency and reduce running costs. Our ambition is for these ICBs to be coterminous with one or more strategic authorities wherever feasible, a commitment made in the “English Devolution White Paper” and reaffirmed in our “10 Year Health Plan”.Aligning public service boundaries facilitates service integration, harnesses the opportunities of strategic planning between the NHS and strategic authorities, and supports delivery of a “health in all policies” approach.I am today announcing the first of these new ICB footprints. These will come into effect on 1 April 2026 and are:Norfolk and Suffolk ICBEssex ICBHampshire and the Isle of Wight ICBSurrey and Sussex ICBNorth West and North Central London ICBThames Valley ICBCentral East ICB (Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Luton, Milton Keynes, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough).In the case of Thames Valley ICB and Central East ICB, we are progressing with these new ICB footprints on the understanding that these may be reviewed in future to allow for alignment with any future strategic authorities, and newly established unitary authorities resulting from local government reorganisation.Next summer, as local government reform progresses, we plan to decide further ICB mergers and boundary changes to come into effect on 1 April 2027.