Launched by Government 3 July 2025
The Launch of the 10 Year Health Plan for England sets out steps to make the NHS fit for the future. We hope it will work. The three ‘shifts’ are: from hospital to community; from analogue to digital; and from treatment to prevention. These are welcome. Delivering as much as possible locally is a reminder of the 2008 plan; let’s hope it is delivered this time. We must remember that the oldest, frailest patients are more analogue users than digital users. Prevention is definitely preferable to cure.
The Mid & South Essex Integrated Care System says:
“The Government’s 10 Year Health Plan for England has been launched, setting out a bold, ambitious and necessary new course for the NHS.
What will this look like in mid and south Essex?
Work is already underway locally that supports the ambitions outlined in the government’s 10 Year Health Plan, framed around the three key shifts in how healthcare is planned, coordinated and delivered. These three shifts are already embedded in our local roadmap for the next five years, see: Our five year roadmap – Mid and South Essex Integrated Care System.
Here are some examples of how this is already taking shape locally:
From hospital to community
Providing care closer to home and reducing unnecessary hospital visits is central to plans to improve health outcomes for local people, and are at the heart of what Integrated Neighbourhood Teams do.
Read about a local example in Basildon where patients are already benefitting from proactive, personalised, and joined-up care in their local community: Bringing the vision of Integrated Neighbourhood Teams to life in Essex – Mid and South Essex Integrated Care System
From analogue to digital
This shift will be key in delivering an NHS that is fit for the future. Locally, our Shared Care Record is already making a huge difference for patients and staff alike. The digital system has already been used over 638,000 times, with healthcare professionals viewing almost 1,000,000 documents to support safer, faster, and more joined-up care. Find out more about the Shared Care Record and the real-world impact it’s already making for local people.
Shared Care Record – Mid and South Essex Integrated Care System
From treatment to prevention
Reaching patients earlier will help prevent illness, improve health outcomes for local people, and ensure services are sustainable and available when people need them. From preventative oral health programmes for young people, to helping identify lung cancer early in those most at risk through the Lung Cancer Screening programme, through to rolling out our award winning tool, FrEDA, which supports healthcare staff to provide holistic care for patients with the most complex needs – preventative, proactive care is key to helping people to live healthy and well.
The plan fundamentally reinvents our national approach to healthcare so that we can guarantee the NHS will be there for all who need it for generations to come.
It has been shaped by the experiences and expectations of members of the public, patients, our partners and the health and care workforce across the country, reflecting the changes that people wanted to see.
Through the ‘three shifts’ – from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from treatment to prevention – we will personalise care, give more power to patients, and ensure that the best of the NHS is available to all.
The GOV UK press release 2 July 2025 includes:
- “Neighbourhood health services to be rolled out across the country, bringing diagnostics, mental health, post-op, rehab and nursing to people’s doorsteps
- Neighbourhood health centres will house services under one roof, open at evenings and weekends
- Plan for Change will rebuild the NHS to train thousands more family doctors, transform hospital outpatient appointments and provide personalised care plans for complex needs
Millions of patients will be treated and cared for closer to their home by new teams of health professionals, Prime Minister Keir Starmer set out, as the government’s Plan for Change delivers a brand-new era for the NHS and delivers one of the most seismic shifts in care in the history of the health service.
The launch of a neighbourhood health service will see pioneering teams, some based entirely under one roof, set up in local communities across the country, to dramatically improve access to the NHS. As part of the government’s aim to shift care out of hospitals and into the community, they will free up overstrained hospitals from perpetual firefighting so they can focus on delivering only the best, most cutting-edge and personalised care.
These neighbourhood health centres will provide easier, more convenient access to a full range of healthcare services right on people’s doorsteps – stopping them from having to make lengthy trips to hospitals. Neighbourhood teams will include staff like nurses, doctors, social care workers, pharmacists, health visitors, palliative care staff and paramedics. Community health workers and volunteers will play a pivotal role in these teams, and local areas will be encouraged to trial innovative schemes like community outreach door-to-door – to detect early signs of illness and reduce pressure on GPs and A&E.
The King’s Fund analysis on 5 July 2025 included:
“What does the plan mean for shifting care from hospital to community?
Key proposals
- Shifting the pattern of health spending, with the share of expenditure on hospital care falling and proportionally greater investment in out of-hospital care.
- Establishing a neighbourhood health centre in every community, starting in places where healthy life expectancy is lowest, and the government is considering the use of public–private partnerships (PPP) to support these centres.
- Introducing two new GP contracts, with roll-out beginning in 2026: one to create ‘single neighbourhood providers’ that deliver enhanced services for groups with similar needs over a single neighbourhood, and another to create ‘multi-neighbourhood providers’ that will deliver care across several different neighbourhoods.
Neighbourhood health is the right direction, but general practice and community services must be the cornerstone
The plan’s vision for neighbourhood health, supported by a shift in the overall proportion of expenditure, while welcome, is not new. The radical change would be delivering the vision in the right way.
True neighbourhood care is not just about the location of services but improving the population’s health. Effective neighbourhood services are hyper-local, co-designed with communities, and supported by trusted relationships that extend far beyond clinical care. This includes recognising the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector not just as service providers (as is presented in this plan) but as a strategic partner, advocate and bridge to communities. All too often, the model described reads as an offer to individuals – focused on delivering services to patients rather than building services with and for communities. The plan also prioritises convenience and speed over continuity and relationship-based care for patients with less complex needs, even though it has clear benefits for all people – not just those with the most complex needs.
General practice and community services need to be the cornerstones of neighbourhood health but are under immense strain and lack the capacity to lead this shift without significant support. The plan does not address how already overstretched primary care or community services staff will be resourced or empowered to take on expanded leadership roles in neighbourhood care and develop the skills they will need to co-create services alongside communities.
Where NHS trusts assume responsibility for neighbourhood health services, this will need to be done in partnership with local organisations and with a focus on communities and improving the health of their local population, rather than reducing the pressures on existing services. There is a risk of simply relocating hospital-based, biomedical models of care into community settings, or that those best suited to lead these services in the long term may not currently have the capacity to take on these contracts. The neighbourhood health service must be fundamentally different and more than a local, smaller outpost of an NHS hospital.
The development of high-functioning multidisciplinary teams does not just happen through co-location or record sharing but requires time and skills to build relationships, understand each other’s roles, and develop trust. The leadership and support to do this work will need to be a key part of the implementation plan. Our research has also found that if this shift is to be realised, the best managers and clinicians should want and be trained to work in primary and community care settings. While the commitment to expose nursing students to neighbourhood settings is welcome, there is no equivalent requirement for doctors, managers or allied health professionals. This could limit the pipeline of future leaders who are trained and motivated to work in community-based care.
Shifting care to the community can improve the value taxpayers receive from their health service, but this shift will not yield significant financial savings in the short term. Hospitals operate with high fixed costs and interdependent services, making it difficult to realise immediate financial benefits from reduced demand. Instead, the impact of investment in neighbourhood health should be measured in long-term improvements in health outcomes. This requires the development of robust metrics for measuring outcomes beyond cost-efficiency or impact on hospital admissions.
SWF Health & Social Care Group 