North West and North Central London ICBs are set to legally merge – becoming a new organisation serving 13 boroughs and a population of around 4.5m.
In recent months, the teams at North Central London ICB (NCL) and North West London ICB (NWL) have been working together to explore how collaboration could produce cost savings for both organisations.
In a joint statement the ICBs highlighted that both boards had considered a range of potential approaches as well as a full merger, including remaining standalone, keeping an informal collaborative approach; and clustering – where both would remain legally separate organisations but with some elements of joint leadership.
‘These options were evaluated against key criteria to explore the extent to which each would enable both organisations to continue to provide high quality and robust services. This week, the two Boards have both supported a recommendation that a fully-integrated merger was the best option,’ it stated.
Frances O’Callaghan, chief executive, North Central London ICB said: ‘By bringing together the best of both organisations, we would create a resilient and ambitious ICB that can continue to focus on improving access to health, reducing inequalities, moving services closer to the community through neighbourhood delivery, and ensuring the health system works better than it is today.
‘It is clear from our work to date that being able to offer scale – as a merged organisation – enables us to be more resilient and cost-effective.
‘We have listened carefully to the feedback from all our partners as they endorsed this proposal. We know that population health, neighbourhoods and place development must continue to be at the forefront of transforming services for patients and residents.’
Rob Hurd, Chief Executive, North West London ICB said: ‘We want to build a stronger, more resilient organisation that enables our staff to thrive and allows us to serve our residents in the best way possible. Our shared view is that organisational scale is a key enabler to be an effective strategic commissioner, and a full merger is the right solution.
‘I’m really proud of the work that we have done in developing neighbourhood health and partnership working and we need the right resources to enable us to build on this and further develop within our role as a strategic commissioner.
‘We also want to ensure we are able to retain and attract the very best people to work in North London – again there is a real benefit to having a certain scale, and having the opportunity to collaborate and utilise the huge range of partners across the combined North West and North Central area is very exciting.’
This is the latest in a series of merging and clustering moves from across ICBs in England.
Earlier this month it was announced that the six West Midlands ICBs are to group into three ‘strategic clusters’ in an effort to reduce costs amid cuts to the health service.
Birmingham and Solihull ICB are to cluster with Black Country ICB, Herefordshire and Worcestershire ICB with Coventry and Warwickshire ICB, and Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin ICB with Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent ICB.
