Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that there are adequate (a) resources and (b) workforce capacity in community health services, particularly in areas served by the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Integrated Care System.

NHS England is responsible for funding allocations to integrated care boards (ICBs). NHS England takes advice on the underlying formula from the independent Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation. The formula takes account of population, age, need, deprivation, health inequality considerations, and unavoidable costs, for example the increased costs caused by lower population density in rural areas. Therefore, the ICB allocations issued by NHS England for 2026/27 to 2028/29 will take account of the demographics of the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Integrated Care System in providing a fair share of overall National Health Service resources. We recently published the Neighbourhood Health Framework, which is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/neighbourhood-health-framework/neighbourhood-health-framework#introduction-to-neighbourhood-health

This framework will help systems deliver neighbourhood health, which will improve people’s health and care outcomes, reduce health inequalities, and help them stay well at home, partly by strengthening primary and community care services. NHS England then wrote to ICBs and NHS providers setting out the expectations on local action to advance neighbourhood health in 2026/27 to 2027/28, including commissioning for population health, with further information available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/next-steps-on-neighbourhood-health-and-new-delivery-models/