Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent progress his Department has made on implementing the NHS England Neuroscience Transformation Programme.

Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for commissioning most services for people with long term conditions, including neurological services. NHS England’s Neuroscience Transformation Programme is continuing to support ICBs to deliver the right service, at the right time for all neurology patients, including providing care closer to home.

A toolkit is being developed to support ICBs to understand and implement this new model. In addition to setting out an integrated model of care, the toolkit will include components on the following areas: delivering acute neurology services; improving health equity in neurology; improving community neurology services; improving access to specialist therapies for multiple sclerosis; streamlining headache services; and living well with a neurological condition.

The programme has developed an online, interactive adult neurology dashboard to support integrated care systems to understand their local neurology landscape and benchmark against other ICBs in England. It sets out key metrics and visualisations for neurology services locally.

The programme is working with several pathfinder systems across the country to implement this guidance on the ground, which will provide examples of good practice and a model for how to develop neurology transformation projects that can be shared nationally.

The programme has supported the development of a national community of practice for neurology transformation, which includes a monthly webinar programme and resources on the Future NHS platform. The Programme also supported a national Neurology Transformation Meeting, co-produced by NHS England, the Neurology Academy and the Neurological Alliance, which took place in January 2025.

The National Programme of Care for Trauma has revised the Neurosciences Specialised Neurology (Adults) Service Specification, which will set out clear deliverables for specialised centres; provide a clearer model of care incorporating up-to-date guidance and best practice; and set out new quality outcomes focusing on improving patient outcomes and experience.