Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department has had recent discussions with (a) NHS England and (b) Derby and Derbyshire Integrated Care Board on transitioning from a clinical commissioning group to an integrated care system; and if her Department will publish guidance on the lessons learned from this process for other integrated care systems and integrated care boards.

NHS England led a transition programme to support the transfer from clinical commissioning groups to integrated care boards (ICBs). Throughout the process, there was careful joint planning and progress monitoring between NHS England and the Department. All 42 ICBs were legally established on 1 July 2022 with no significant transition issues reported.

There are no plans to publish additional guidance, however the Department, via the National Institute for Health and Care Research Policy Research Programme, has recently commissioned an independent research study to evaluate the implementation of the Health and Care Act 2022.

The study aims to understand the different ways that partners within Integrated Care Systems, namely ICBs, integrated care partnerships, and wider system partners) are coming together to design, commission and deliver services, fulfil their duties, and the potential impacts. All study outputs, including interim reports, will be published. An interim report is due in late 2024.