Report to:                  East Sussex Health and Wellbeing Board

Date of meeting:       23 September 2025

By:                              Director of Joint Commissioning and Integrated Community Teams Development (East Sussex), NHS Sussex and Director of Adult Social Care and Health, East Sussex County Council

Title:                           Integration programme update

Purpose of Report:  To provide an update of progress with the East Sussex priorities in the Sussex Shared Delivery Plan in quarter 1 25/26, including the outcomes of the fifth informal HWB development session, and an update on wider developments influencing integration and collaboration.

Recommendations:

East Sussex Health and Wellbeing Board (HWB) is recommended to:

1.    Note the progress in quarter 1 for the East Sussex HWB Shared Delivery Plan (SDP) priorities and plans in 25/26 as set out in Appendix 1

 

2.    Agree the outcomes from the informal HWB development session on reducing health inequalities and measuring the impact of our work as a health and care system, as set out in the summary briefing note contained in Appendix 2

 

3.    Endorse the successful submission from East Sussex to be part of the Government’s National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme, and our collective delivery of the programme starting in September 25 focussed on Hastings and Rother

 

4.    Endorse the HWB’s leadership role in supporting the development of the new neighbourhood health plan, in line with further guidance that is expected from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England (NHSE), and aligning with the 5-year organisation plans for the NHS.

 


1       Background

1.1       The 5-year Sussex Integrated Care Strategy Improving Lives Together was approved by the Sussex Health and Care Assembly in December 2022, setting out our ambition for a healthier future for everyone in Sussex over a 5 year period. It builds on our East Sussex Health and Wellbeing Board Strategy Healthy Lives, Healthy People (2022 – 2027) and our understanding of our population in East Sussex through our Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA). An accompanying 5-year Shared Delivery Plan (SDP) was also agreed by all partners in June 2023.

1.2       As reported at the last HWB meeting, the Government’s new 10 Year Health Plan for England: fit for the future (10YHP) was published on 3 July 2025. This sets out plans to reinvent the NHS based on three shifts as the core components of a new care model:

1.3       The 10YHP also set out reforms to the NHS operating model to enable and underpin the three shifts, including national changes to NHS England (NHSE) and the Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC), and local changes to Integrated Care Boards (the subject of a separate report to the HWB at the last meeting, and also at this meeting).  

1.4       Alongside this the 10YHP introduced an expectation that a new ‘neighbourhood health plan’ will be drawn up under the leadership of the HWB. Since the HWB meeting on 15 July 2025, a new National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme (NNHIP) has been launched to support delivery of the 10YHP shift from hospital to community, and a new 5-year planning framework for the NHS in England has now been published. Further guidance is also expected about implementing the 10YHP, including developing neighbourhood health plans.

1.5       The national developments are in keeping with our joint vision set out in Improving Lives Together and our Sussex Integrated Care System (ICS) approach more broadly. This has a strong Place focus reflecting the specific needs and challenges of the populations in East Sussex, West Sussex and Brighton & Hove informed by the three HWB strategies and the Joint Strategic Needs Assessments (JSNAs) for their populations. It includes the shared ambition to see more joined up working in our communities and neighbourhoods through establishing Integrated Community Teams (ICTs).

1.6       This report brings an update of progress with our early work in 2025/26 on our Place delivery plans in our SDP, including the outcomes of our fifth informal HWB development session and progress with ICTs. It also considers some of the recent national developments and the implications for the HWB and our collaborative work in East Sussex.

2          Supporting information

East Sussex HWB SDP progress in 25/26

2.1          Since the refresh for year 3 of our East Sussex HWB SDP objectives, early progress in quarter 1 (1 April – 30 June 2025) has been reviewed. A draft summary of progress across our 7 shared priorities is included in Appendix 1, covering our collaborative work together at Place to support delivery in the following areas:

Strengthening the role and vision of the HWB and East Sussex Health and Care partnership

2.2          The fifth informal HWB development session took place on 4 September 2025 as part of the programme of 7 sessions to deliver our ongoing SDP objective of strengthening the unique role of the HWB as the key strategic stewardship group for our health and care system in East Sussex. The session focussed on the JSNA theme of reducing health inequalities and explored how we can understand the impact we are having on population health and wellbeing in a measurable way, using the East Sussex Shared Outcomes Framework set out in our East Sussex Health and Wellbeing Board Strategy Healthy Lives, Healthy People.

 

2.3          The draft summary briefing with the key messages from the session is included in Appendix 2 for review and formal agreement by the HWB. The programme of informal development sessions has now been underway for a year, with two more sessions to go. The next session will take place in November 2025 focussed on mental health and wellbeing and the final session in the initial phase of the programme is planned for February 2026 to review and begin the process of refreshing our rolling 5-year HWB strategy Healthy Lives, Healthy People (2022 – 2027).

 

Integrated Community Teams (ICTs) and Neighbourhood Health

2.4          The shift from hospital to community set out in the 10YHP involves remodelling to a ‘Neighbourhood Health Service’ that brings care into local communities, convenes professionals into patient-centred teams, and ends fragmentation.

2.5          Our implementation of ICTs is our shared ambition that will support delivery of Neighbourhood Health in Sussex. In East Sussex this is structured around our teams working together in common footprints that are aligned to our 5 borough and district boundaries.

2.6          Building on work in 2024/25, we have continued to make strong progress with putting in place the leadership arrangements for our teams to develop joint plans. This will help manage resources across the shared strategic priorities for our health and care system in the specific ICT area, as well as local priorities driven by the strengths and challenges of the communities in that footprint.

2.7          Our current focus as we prepare for winter is implementing multi-disciplinary teams to deliver more proactive care to people with high and more complex health and social care needs, for example due to being older and frail or having multiple long term health conditions. We aim to bring teams of professionals together to start to use a new risk tool to identify groups of people who would benefit from better coordinated proactive care to avoid unnecessary admission to hospital. Over time it is expected that this will lead to less reliance on urgent and unplanned care and better outcomes overall.

National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme (NNHIP)

2.8          The new National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme (NNHIP) was launched by NHSE and DHSC on 9 July 2025 through an open invitation to local authority and ICB Chief Executives to submit expressions of interest from their Places by 22 August 2025. As one of the three Places within the Sussex ICS, the East Sussex Health and Care Partnership submitted an application.

2.9          In a highly competitive process, with 141 expressions of interest (roughly 83% of the number of Places in England), it was announced on 9 September 2025 that East Sussex is one of the cohort of 43 successful Places selected to be part of the first wave of this flagship programme. The initiative is one of the first of its kind in the country, designed to bring healthcare directly into local communities, and is backed by the Government’s £10 million investment nationally in neighbourhood health services.

2.10       The national initiative will support working at scale, both within Place and alongside other Places across the country simultaneously, to accelerate the implementation and learning necessary to transform to a neighbourhood focussed health and care model. As part of the programme, Places will have access to a national coach, subject experts, face-to-face regional workshops, and a knowledge hub for peer-to-peer learning. The NNHIP formally starts in September 2025 and is expected to be delivered within existing system resources, with much of the work taking place at the local level.

2.11       The initial focus for the national requirements is Hastings and Rother, where we have some of our largest gaps in health outcomes and an ageing population in coastal and rural communities. Building on our ICTs, neighbourhood teams will bring together a wide range of professionals and services, including GPs, community nurses, hospital doctors, pharmacists, dentists, optometrists, social care workers, paramedics, and local voluntary organisations. By working together, these professionals will deliver joined-up, end-to-end care tailored to patients’ needs.

2.12       The focus will initially be on improving services to help people manage multiple conditions and complex needs to reduce unnecessary hospital visits, prevent complications, and make access to care simpler and faster. In time this type of neighbourhood working will deliver care that better meets the needs of children and adults, including those with multiple long-term conditions and those affected by wider social and economic factors.

2.13       Our East Sussex Partnership application was framed around our strong shared understanding of our population at Place, and the need to do more to respond to health and care needs to build on our strong foundations of established and embedded integrated care services as well as our development of ICTs. This includes improving the experience and quality of care for people with multiple long-term conditions and the proportionately higher numbers of older and frail people in our population, as well as stronger approaches to population health and prevention across all age groups. Over time improved proactive care in communities and neighbourhoods will also help reduce the need for more expensive health and care services, further enabling the transformation to a more neighbourhood-based model of integrated care.

2.14       A strength in our submission was the Place partnership infrastructure we have to lead development of Neighbourhood Health approaches in all five of our ICTs in East Sussex, as well as across our System. This comprises a strong delivery partnership across health and social care providers and the voluntary sector, working with the Sussex Primary Care Provider Collaborative, Sussex Provider Collaborative, and Sussex Hospice Alliance.

2.15       Being part of this national platform will be a significant opportunity to further concentrate collective efforts on delivering our shared vision for our local communities across the NHS, local government, and VCSE sector in East Sussex. As a result, we will now need to ensure our partnership and programme governance arrangements are strengthened to manage delivery within this new context. This links to our broader SDP objective to review our East Sussex Health and Care Partnership governance and takes in the wider system changes and risks such as ICB reforms, as signalled at the last HWB meeting.

New planning framework for the NHS in England

2.16       As reported at the last meeting of the HWB, in the national 10YHP in the future a ‘neighbourhood health plan’ will be drawn up by local government, the NHS, and their partners, incorporating Public Health, social care, and the Better Care Fund under the leadership of the HWB. The ICB will then bring together the local neighbourhood health plans into a population health improvement plan for its footprint and use this to inform commissioning decisions.

2.17       In August 2025 NHSE published the ‘Planning Framework for the NHS in England’ setting out a new 5-year planning horizon. Alongside neighbourhood health plans, this included a new process of separate but aligned plans and returns from ICBs and Trusts. An integrated process, this includes finance, workforce, and clinical and operational service plans, as well as digital, quality improvement, and infrastructure/capital plans.

2.18       The national Planning Framework informs the development of plans for 2026/27 – 2030/31, with initial phases this year to support returns for 2026/27. Further multi-year guidance and financial allocations are expected at the end of September/early October.

2.19       The Planning Framework is targeted primarily at ICBs and provider Trusts who will produce a 5-year strategic commissioning plan and a 5-year integrated delivery plan respectively. These two 5-year organisation plans, together with the neighbourhood health plan, will be the core outputs of the integrated local planning processes, and NHSE and the DHSC will issue further specific guidance to support their respective development.

2.20       Under the leadership of the HWB, Place partners are expected to have a key role within the Planning Framework as follows:

2.21     The graphic below shows the key elements of the national planning architecture:

2.22     The renewed emphasis on the role of Place in bringing together a joint neighbourhood health plan under the leadership of the HWB is welcome. In light of this new requirement, it is currently unclear what the status and expectations for the statutory HWB Strategy is and it is hoped that the further guidance will address this. NHSE will also work with Government to review the previous requirement for ICBs and their Provider Trusts to prepare a 5-year joint forward plan (JFP), which in Sussex is our Shared Delivery Plan.

NHS Sussex ICB commissioning intentions for 2026/27

2.23     To support planning for 2026/27, NHS Sussex ICB launched its draft Commissioning Intentions 2026/27 in August, accompanied by engagement with local stakeholders including a public survey. The commissioning intentions outline plans to:

·           bring care closer to home

·           cut variation in quality and outcomes

·           improve value through local and acute provider alliances

·           make better use of technology and workforce skills

·           support innovation through new contracts and shared risk

·           tackle financial imbalance, with Sussex currently 3.9% over its fair funding share

2.24   Strongly focussed on delivering Neighbourhood Health to support integration and overall system sustainability, this is part of the ICB’s response to the 10YHP and its developing role as a strategic outcomes-based commissioner arising from the nationally announced changes to ICBs (previously reported to the July meeting of the HWB). As a key partner, commissioner (including joint commissioner), and provider of key local social care and public health services in East Sussex, many of which are integrated with health, the County Council provided early written feedback to support this and attended the stakeholder seminar on 3 September 2025 alongside other partners to help shape the plans.

3          Conclusion and reasons for recommendations

3.1       We are making good early progress with our Place delivery plans for our HWB objectives for year 3 (2025/26) of the SDP, in particular the implementation of our five East Sussex ICTs and frontline multi-disciplinary teams for proactive care, as the foundation for delivering Neighbourhood Health in Sussex. Our work to strengthen the vision and strategic role of the HWB is also continuing to create a greater shared understanding of our population health and care needs, together with the assets and collective resources available within our communities.

3.2       Our work to put in place a joined-up offer of health, care and wellbeing in our communities and neighbourhoods puts us in a strong position to both continue to navigate the context of the risks and challenges within a reformed health and care system, signalled at the last HWB meeting, and respond to new expectations in the 10YHP Fit for the Future.

3.3       The development of a neighbourhood health plan under the leadership of the HWB, together with the 5-year organisation plans for our provider Trusts and the ICB, will help to better align our vision, ambitions and resources for the population of East Sussex and underpin the supporting Place delivery plans across our organisations and services. This may also influence and further shape in-year Place delivery plans in some areas, as well as our SDP more broadly, and ultimately our collaborative work to refresh the HWB Strategy.

3.4       In addition to our successful submission to be part of the first cohort of Places on the flagship National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme, this represents a significant opportunity to further focus collective attention and effort on delivery of our shared ambitions for our local communities and improve outcomes for our population. As such, the HWB’s strategic leadership of this across the NHS, local government and voluntary sector at Place will be critical.

 

ASHLEY SCARFF

Director of Joint Commissioning and Integrated Community Teams Development (East Sussex), NHS Sussex

 

MARK STAINTON

Director of Adult Social Care and Health, East Sussex County Council

 

Contact Officer

Email: Vicky.smith@eastsussex.gov.uk

Tel: 07827 841063

 

Appendix 1: Draft progress summary East Sussex HWB high level SDP quarter 1 (25/26)

Appendix 2: HWB development session 5 – draft summary briefing