Four NHS organisations in Lancashire and South Cumbria entered into a programme of national support

Extra support will be provided to four NHS organisations in the region by NHS England’s national and regional teams as part of a national recovery support programme.

Last year, Lancashire and South Cumbria was one of a number of systems included as part of an investigation and intervention process. Since then, NHS partners in Lancashire and South Cumbria have been working closely with NHS England North West to address a number of challenges around finance, performance, governance and leadership.

Despite the support provided during this process, the ICB and three of the region’s trusts have not improved sufficiently. A recommendation has therefore been made by NHS England to place the four organisations into NHS Oversight Framework (NOF) Segment 4 and for those organisations to begin to receive intensive support from the National Recovery Support Programme (RSP). The affected organisations are:

• NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB
• Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust
• Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

NHSE national and regional teams will work collaboratively with each organisation to agree the key drivers of the performance challenges that need to be resolved. This will provide insight around each organisation’s individual support needs and exit criteria, along with interventions and oversight arrangements.

Oversight and coordination of the improvement plan and support package for each organisation will be led by Improvement Directors appointed by NHS England.

Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB chief executive, Kevin Lavery, said: “We welcome this additional support from NHS England for the ICB and our Trusts, as we recognise the severity of the situation that we are in.

“We take responsibility for the challenges we face in Lancashire and South Cumbria and recognise that there is more to be done in relation to our financial position. We will continue to work in partnership with NHS England and our partners across the system to deliver changes and make improvements. Despite the hard work of colleagues across our system, we have unfortunately not made the improvements that we had hoped to by this point.

“I can confidently say that our NHS workforce is dedicated to providing the highest standard of care for our communities and is working hard under difficult circumstances to continue delivering the best care day in, day out.

“We have an opportunity here to ensure that the support and expertise from this programme helps us to make improvements which will ultimately support our system to deliver high quality, sustainable health services for the people of Lancashire and South Cumbria.”

This additional support does not affect access to NHS services in the area, and members of the public should continue to use health and care services in the same way as they have previously.