Agenda and minutes

To receive a report on the appointment of Substitute Members. Any Member of the Board who is unable to attend the meeting may appoint a substitute member. The Contact Officer must be notified prior to the commencement of the meeting.

Pursuant to the Council’s constitution the appointment of the following substitute members was reported:-

Alistair Blair for Birju Bartoli (Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust)

Kathryn Elliott for Chloe Mann (Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne & Wear NHS  Trust)

Voting Members of the Board are invited to declare any registerable and/or non-registerable interests in matters appearing on the agenda, and the nature of that interest. They are also invited to disclose any dispensation in relation to any registerable and/or non-registerable interests that have been granted in respect of any matters appearing on the agenda.

Non voting members are invited to declare any conflicts of interest in matters appearing on the agenda and the nature of that interest.

Please complete the Declarations of Interests card available at the meeting and return it to the Democratic Services Officer before leaving the meeting.

Councillor Pat Oliver declared a non-registerable personal interest in relation to references contained in the draft North Cumbria and North East Forward Plan to the Autism & Neurodevelopment Service Plan because she has a family member with Autism.

Councillor Peter Earley declared a registerable personal interest in relation to Section 3.9 of the draft North Cumbria and North East Forward Plan which referred to carers and volunteers because he is a Trustee of the North Tyneside Carers Centre.

To confirm the minutes of the meeting held on 12 June 2023.

Resolved that the minutes of the previous meeting held on 12 June 2023 be confirmed and signed by the Chair

To consider and provide feedback on the draft North East and North Cumbria NHS Joint Forward Plan 2023/24 - 2028/29.

The North East and North Cumbria NHS (Integrated Care Board (ICB)) and its partner NHS trusts were required, before the start of each financial year, to prepare a joint forward plan setting out how they proposed to exercise their functions in the next five years. The ICB were required to provide the Board with a draft of the forward plan and consult the Board on whether the draft takes proper account of its joint local health and wellbeing strategy.

Peter Rooney, the Director of Strategy and Planning at the North East and North Cumbria NHS, attended the meeting to present details of the Plan and answer any questions from members of the Board.

The draft Joint Forward Plan was complementary to the Integrated Care Partnership Strategy, which had been presented to the Board at its meeting on 10 November 2022. It was a delivery plan for the parts of our strategy related particularly to NHS delivered or commissioned services, but within the broader partnership context. It provided a strategic overview of the key priorities and objectives for the medium term, a high-level summary of the ICB’s priorities and objectives and a summary of the work programmes it would deliver to achieve its medium-term objectives. More detailed action plans had been developed for each of the integrated care strategy goals, the integrated care strategy enablers and specific service areas such as urgent and emergency care and mental health.

A place based action plan for each local authority area would also be developed and the Board were presented with details of the themes contained on the North Tyneside plan.

The Board were invited to make comments on the draft joint forward plan, in particular whether there was anything missing from the plan, anything wrong in the plan, whether the plan was aligned to the Board’s priorities and whether the Board would be comfortable offering an endorsement of the plan. Once the ICB had received all the feedback by the deadline for comments on 31 August 2023, it intended to re-publish the plan in September. It would also continue to review and update the plan each year going forward and would publish a revised version every March in line with the national guidance.

Following the presentation members of the Board made comments and asked a series of questions when the following issues were raised and discussed:

a)  It was noted that the plan contained a lot of focus on prevention and so the the Board queried the extent to which the ICB would be committing or re-focussing its funding away from treatment and towards prevention.

b)  Board members made reference to some of the fundamental problems  experienced by users of NHS services, such as access to an NHS dentist, access to GPs, waiting times for CAMHS and neurodevelopmental diagnosis, access to mental health services for adults including waiting times for IAPT and those in crisis in A&E, ambulance response times and waiting times in A&E, and queried whether these types  ...  view the full minutes text for item HW8/23