Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to provide statutory guidance to ensure that the community and voluntary sector will have a reserved place in the new (a) integrated care systems and (b) integrated care providers.

We are proposing to establish statutory integrated care systems, made up of an integrated care board (ICB) and integrated care partnership (ICPs).

The ‘Integrated Care Systems: design framework’, published by NHS England on 17 June, made clear that partnerships with the community and voluntary sectors should be embedded as an essential part of how integrated care systems operate at all levels. By April 2022, ICBs and ICPs will be expected to develop a formal agreement for engaging and embedding the community and voluntary sector in system level governance and decision-making arrangements. Statutory guidance on ICP and ICBs will be published in due course.

We will consider what guidance is necessary to support integrated care providers (ICPs), should we decide to introduce the ICP contract.