Refusal of FOI request, 5 January 2017.

The county’s five-year Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) to improve the local population’s health and wellbeing is published today.

Led by local clinicians, the STP has been developed by all local NHS organisations and local government officers and through discussion with our staff and patients. It aims to provide the solutions to the county’s challenges to deliver the best possible care to keep the population fit for the future and to take joint responsibility for improving their health and wellbeing.

The plan addresses the issues highlighted in our Evidence for Change (March 2016) and the main reasons why changes are needed in the local health and care system. It details how we propose we could improve services and become clinically and financially sustainable for the future.

Following on from the interim STP summary published in July where we forecasted that as a system we will have a £250m financial deficit by 2020/21, the STP outlines that this is in addition to £250m of savings and efficiency plans individual Trusts and the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) need to deliver over the same period. This makes a total system-wide financial challenge of £500m over the next four years. It also estimates the need to invest £43m to improve services over these four years which increases the total system-wide financial challenge from £500m to £543m. If the Trusts and CCG meet their savings and efficiency plans, and all aspects of the STP are delivered, this will achieve the savings and efficiency target (of £500m) and produce a small NHS surplus of £1.3m (by 2020/21).

Due to the high levels of acute hospital activity, and resulting deteriorating financial position in our system, we are looking at ways to accelerate the pace of change and focus early investment on the areas that will have greatest impact on reducing hospital activity levels. Our priorities are to increase the amount of care delivered closer to home and to keep people well in their communities.

The scale of the changes required is significant and we all recognise the delivery will be challenging. However, all of the leaders across the system, have now signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) as a demonstration of their commitment to work together, share budgets, deliver agreed clinical services and ensure that together we provide health and care services that are clinically and financially sustainable.

The proposals will be further developed over the next few months, and there will be opportunities for staff, patients and other stakeholders to be involved in developing the solutions and to be involved with any formal consultation process.

The following documents are available to read HERE:

You can find the STP leaflet HERE

If you want to be part of the discussion and work with us to develop the proposed solutions, please contact us via contact@fitforfuture.org.uk

You can also visit www.fitforfuture.org.uk and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and developments: Twitter @fitforfuturenhs, Facebook fitforfuturenhs

Kind regards

David Astley, Independent Chair, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Sustainability and Transformation Programme