A message from our Chair and Chief Executive
The Government has today published the 10 Year Health Plan providing the blueprint for development of an ‘NHS fit for the future’ and as well as sharing this ambitious Plan with you, we wanted to provide some important local context.
Through the NHS in Gloucestershire, local people got involved during the Autumn and Winter and fed into the national conversation on development of the Plan. Hundreds of residents attended workshops and completed the One Gloucestershire People’s Panel Survey.
This also helped to ensure our 5-year Gloucestershire Joint Forward Plan (refreshed for 2025/2026) was aligned and continues to address the priorities of our local population.
Why we need to change
Demand for both health and social care is increasing from a population that is getting bigger, older and increasingly experiencing chronic conditions such as diabetes. Mental ill-health has also placed a growing strain on individuals and services since the pandemic.
As such, the Plan places a real focus on sickness to prevention, the shift from hospital to community, including development of a neighbourhood health service and sets out a gear shift in the movement from analogue to digital to support NHS modernisation.
The Plan is clear that innovation and reform must be front and centre of our approach and that the development and transformation it describes is also about making the NHS sustainable for future generations.
The 10 Year Health Plan – a journey
The 10 Year Health Plan is a journey and whilst the key elements are very much in line with our existing strategic priorities for the medium to long term, we are also midway through a difficult reset year, operating within a very challenging financial environment.
Our priorities this year include reducing waiting times, improving access to essential services like cancer care, primary care and mental health support.
In Gloucestershire, we remain committed to the principle of joined up services and support being delivered in neighbourhoods and communities where possible and recognise that some services should be provided from more central locations to ensure quality of care, safety and the best outcomes for patients.
Whilst our approach will continue to be centred on providing the best possible clinical care and health outcomes for local people, we are also committed to reducing waste and duplication of effort and will need to make difficult decisions to live within our financial means.
How the national 10 Year Health Plan fits with our plans in Gloucestershire
We will be considering the national 10 Year Health Plan in greater detail as a Board and alongside our health and care partners. We did however want to offer some initial observations in the context of our strategic plans and the direction of travel for local services and support.
It is clear that many of the key challenges and opportunities set out in the national 10 Year Health Plan are major themes in our 5-year Joint Forward Plan (JFP). The JFP is underpinned by three strategic pillars:
Making Gloucestershire a better place for the future
We know that strong partnerships to support the shift to prevention and good health are critical and it starts early.
Placing significant focus on families and the formative years of children and young people is universally recognised in Gloucestershire. Whether it’s physical or mental health – healthier young lives means a healthier NHS in the future.
We strongly support prioritisation in the Plan for mental health services and support in neighbourhoods recognising the substantial increase in need in recent years.
We will continue to invest in services for children, young people and adults in schools, communities and at home. For example, our trailblazing Young Minds Matter teams in primary and secondary schools, are already supporting children and young people across 135 education settings – face to face and online – covering 58,000 people.
We have made progress in developing accessible support in neighbourhoods with mental health practitioners working in community settings, like GP practices where they are needed most and support the Plan’s future direction. We are also joining up advice and support through our Gloucestershire 111 offer. We acknowledge the imperative and need to support thousands of people back to health, back to education and employment and back to fulfilling lives.
As the Plan describes, we will major on moving the dial from sickness to prevention. Whether that’s supporting and incentivising healthy and active lifestyles through community programmes and technology, development of our ground-breaking work in social prescribing and creative health, tackling hypertension or improving screening, we will work across organisational boundaries and in neighbourhoods to do this.
Gloucestershire is already supporting a growing emphasis on health and wellbeing hubs, population health and proactive care. For example, through GP surgery patient lists, identifying people who can be supported earlier in areas such as frailty and dementia.
Transforming what we do
We continue to work locally and nationally to tackle the underlying issues that have prevented real stability and a healthy future for primary care – the bedrock of our NHS, including funding.
We welcome the strides already made by primary care teams and Primary Care Networks in Gloucestershire to support neighbourhood health, introduce digital telephony, improve appointment systems and increase access, despite the substantial growth in levels of need.
That greater shift and focus on transforming communities and integrating services is essential and fully supported in Gloucestershire.
Our efforts to prioritise long standing health inequalities requires us to adapt and wherever possible tailor our support and service offer in neighbourhoods and communities.
In line with the Plan, we will continue to support integration from the bottom up through our dedicated and innovative work in Primary Care Networks and further develop Integrated Neighbourhood Teams and Services including pharmacy, GP surgery services, nursing, paramedics, health visiting, rehabilitation and therapy services, social care, mental health care, community diagnostics and increased access to dental services.
Gloucestershire has a network of services based in health facilities across the county and in people’s homes, working together, many providing care in the evenings, at weekends as well as in the daytime. We will look carefully at how best to develop innovative, joined up and sustainable services for the future with the patient’s care and needs at the centre, working with our partners, including the voluntary and community sector and communities.
We will continue to build our virtual wards and invest in community support and technology, helping vulnerable people, including older people and those with chronic long-term conditions, to take an active role in their own health and care, remain independent and supported at home for longer, whilst reducing the need for hospital stays.
By building up our integrated community based services and caring for people as close to home as possible, we will support our acute hospital services to focus on their specialist areas of expertise as key healthcare partners. Our innovative service developments in respiratory care, eye care (highlighted in the 10 Year Health Plan) and heart failure are great examples of what can be done when partners work as one.
The health of our NHS and local people is also dependent on supporting and developing our dedicated and diverse workforce in all parts of the system.
We recognise the huge challenges our staff face and we will explore in detail the measures outlined in the Plan. We will strive together to make the NHS in Gloucestershire the employer of choice in terms of training, education and professional development and prioritise innovative approaches to recruitment.
We will champion the drive from analogue to digital in all aspects of healthcare. There is already much to celebrate, but we must continue to capitalise at pace on the advances in technology, medicine and life sciences. We know for example, that new technologies can identify and catch health problems earlier, empower patients, improve efficiency and reduce waiting times.
Already in Gloucestershire, nearly 8,500 health and social care professionals are using the latest version of Joining Up Your Information, a software system that allows instant, secure access to patient health and social care records.
We continue to see growth in the number of residents using the NHS app. Over the last year it was used to book an average of more than 4,000 GP practice appointments and order around 56,000 repeat prescriptions every month. The Plan sets out how the NHS app will develop to provide a new front door to the health service and give patients greater control and choice over their healthcare.
Improving health and care services today
We will make best use of the resources available to us in 2025/26 to continue the significant improvements made in reducing waiting lists for operations and procedures, including increased access to diagnostics, and tackle waiting times for mental health services and cancer care.
Along with digital transformation, the local NHS will also continue to improve processes, for example simplifying the patient’s care journey, including outpatient appointments.
As the Plan sets out, improving urgent and emergency care means increasing support outside of hospital in the community, developing the NHS app and 111 to help people get the right support, first time and improving joint working and decision making in hospital. The success of our Integrated Flow Hub at Gloucestershire hospitals is proof positive that we can make better decisions and improve the experience of patients by all working as one.
Organisational development and reform
NHS Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) will have a crucial role to play in making the ambitions set out in the Plan a reality on the ground with a more focused role as strategic commissioners of local health services. Alongside our partners, we will be responsible for improving population health, closing health inequalities and building the new neighbourhood health service.
As we cluster with NHS Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire ICB this year, we will make the most of our collective strengths and maintain strong local partnerships and ‘place’ based arrangements within the overall footprint to support those goals.
The 10 Year Health Plan and soon to be published Dash Review Report will set out reforms to a number of safety, regulatory and representative bodies and structures. This includes changes intended to ‘strengthen and simplify’ how the patient voice is heard and acted upon. We will support our partners affected by these changes, and as an ICB, we will be clear on how we listen, involve and work with people and communities to improve care.
A partnership approach
We cannot solve the current challenges alone. We will continue to work seamlessly across public health, the NHS (including the Gloucestershire GP collaborative and NHS Trusts), social care and with a broad range of voluntary, community and public sector partners in the knowledge that prevention is better than cure and the health of the NHS and local people is dependent on building healthy communities, a healthy workforce and strong and sustainable services.
We will work tirelessly with vision and purpose to support implementation of the NHS 10 Year Health Plan and strive to ensure that the NHS, beloved by the public and staff alike, is fit for current and future generations.
You can read the full NHS 10 Year Health Plan and the executive summary here.
Best wishes
| Dame Gill Morgan | Mary Hutton | |
| Chair | Chief Executive Officer |