Delivering our NHS vision and priorities
Our vision is to have a high-quality, community-centred health and care system by 2035. This means focusing on prevention, delivering care in people’s homes or as close to home as possible and making the best use of technology to reduce reliance on hospitals.
If we want to achieve our vision, we must continue to transform – change – the way we currently deliver health and care services in Lancashire and South Cumbria.
This is very much in line with Lord Darzi’s report on the state of the National Health Service in England, published in September 2024, as well as the Government’s three ‘big shifts’ which we expect to be at the forefront of the new NHS 10-Year Plan; moving care from hospitals to communities; making better use of technology and focusing on preventing sickness, not just treating it.
Lancashire and South Cumbria is the single most financially challenged system in the NHS. We are currently spending beyond our means with an anticipated underlying deficit of £350 million at the end of the financial year 2024/25. Our annual budget for 2025/26 is approximately £5.5 billion and we must take immediate action to reduce our spending. Our challenge heading into 2025/26 is considerable and will result in us needing to plan our service provision and work with partners in a different way.
Each year, as part of our planning process, we set out our commissioning intentions. These describe the commissioning delivery plan to achieve our system vision and clinical strategy. We are going into 2025/26 with a clear set of commissioning intentions, which will provide a robust prioritisation process for the way we commission, to ensure we remain within our budget whilst meeting all nationally-mandated requirements.
The commissioning intentions for 2025/26 were approved at our board meeting on 19 March 2025, and a draft version of our commissioning intentions can be found here:
Our Joint Forward Plan also highlights the significant financial challenge we are currently facing and our plans to face this head on with the development of our Lancashire and South Cumbria Roadmap 2030 which identifies our priorities for 2025/26 and beyond. The priorities within the roadmap will include delivering in-year impact for intermediate care, managing long-term conditions in primary care, improving end-of-life care and frailty in addition to delivering transformation in the way we provide cancer, mental health, children and young people’s services, acute and elective care. The Joint Forward Plan can be found here:
The reality is we will have to make some difficult decisions over the next few months which may not always be popular. This may include ward closures where we are not providing value for money or working in the most efficient way, or delivering services in a different way to how they are currently provided.
These decisions will require careful management, may not be quick to implement and, in some instances, will require engagement and consultation as per the NHSE service change process. Any proposed changes will be clinically led, subject to the necessary impact assessments, and we will commit to undertake the appropriate level of engagement with patients, members of the pubic, our staff and wider stakeholders. It is important that we carry out any of these changes with honesty and integrity.
Despite the challenges that we face, we remain positive that there are excellent services, passionate and dedicated staff and positive examples of collaboration to build upon to achieve our system’s vision for improving health and care. We have opportunities to reduce waste and duplication, and reconfigure services which will improve outcomes for our population whilst being more sustainable in the future.