Health & Adults Scrutiny Sub-Committee - Tuesday 10 March 2026, 4:30pm - Tower Hamlets Council webcasts

Health & Adults Scrutiny Sub-Committee
Tuesday, 10th March 2026 at 4:30pm 

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Good evening and welcome to this final health and scrutiny subcommittee meeting for this
municipal year.
I'm Councillor Gulam Kibriya Choudhury and I'll be chairing this last meeting.
The meeting is being recorded and broadcasted for the council's website for public views.
If there are any technical issues, I will decide if and how the meeting should continue
after taking advice from officers.
Members should only speak on my direction and ensure to speak clearly into the microphones.
As a courtesy, please have your mobile on silent and people joining online.
Can you keep microphone on mute except when speaking?
Those of you online who wish to speak, please use the raise hand function and do not use the chat function.
Naseema, can you confirm or indicate if you have any apologies being received?
We have received apologies from earlier.
Before we move on to our main order of business, I want to inform our members and speakers that we
will adjourn this meeting at 5 .55 p .m. so that we can open break for Iftar and evening prayers.
We will allow 30 minutes for this and so I expect to recommend the meeting at 6 .25 p .m. until conclusion.
And all of you will break and fast with us today.
Now I go around and ask committee members, introduce yourself and declare if you have any DPIs
and if any please indicate which aspect the interest relates and state whether
the interest is a personal personnel or pre -judicial nature provide an
explanation for each declaration please good afternoon everyone my name is
I don't have any DPI.
Hello.
My name is Leo Conrad De Souza.
I'm representative of Health Watch Star Hamlet.
I have nothing to declare and no conflict of interest.
Over to you.
Good afternoon everyone, I'm Charlotte Poppy, I'm the Chief Strategic Commissioning Officer
for the Integrated Care Board for North East London. Here for item 1.
Hi, I'm Seon Hwan Ban Ji, Director of Public Health, Tahemelet's Council.
Councillor Sabina Acta, Lead Member for Health, Other Social Care and Wellbeing, I have no
DPA's, anything to declare. Thank you.
Good afternoon, Georgia Cimbani, Corporate Director for Health and Adult Social Care. Thank you.
Good afternoon, Chanel Arquette, Interim Director of Adult Social Care.
Matt White, apologies for the croaky voice. Matt White, Interim Director of Service Development here for the Community Equipment Service.
Thank you so much.
Mark, did you hear us?
Yeah, thank you chair.
Councillor Mark Francis from Bo Eastwood,
apologies I can't be there in person at this earlier time.
No declarations.
The minutes from the last meeting, 20th January, 2026, have been circulated. Can the committee
members confirm this as a true and accurate for the court.
Yes.
Thank you.
We have received responses from services for action logs
request.
Information has been circulated offline and reflected
in the action log.
We have received the performance dashboard in the agenda pack.
This is for information only adult social care performance.
Can I ask a question about the dashboard?
Okay, thank you and thanks again to the team for providing this information. I really do
think it's helpful just in terms of us and our own understanding as elected members of
the director's performance. So I guess that the point that I wanted to raise was that
overall, the team seems to be really on track on most of these. There's one of them that
and comes up fairly regularly as not quite on track which is the one around safeguarding
inquiries and can, sorry I can't remember if it's concerns or inquiries, I think that's the
that's the one that's come up before inquiries completed within 20 working days. So I think
the performance is above where it's been on previous years and it's above for this kind
of point in the year as well, or at least as it was recorded there. So I just wondered
if the Director might say how this committee in the next municipal year might be involved
a little bit more in the setting of these targets?
Like would, if the intention is to continue with these ones,
is that something that the committee
would be notified about?
Would it be asked if there's any idea
about changing the target or the metric
that's used in the target?
Thank you, Chair.
Yes, hi, Councillor Francis.
We are at the moment largely content with the performance indicators that we are tracking on
the basis that they are some of these are some of these targets are targets that we are all expected
as local authorities to measure nationally and also from an operations perspective they really
give us a sense of where we are performing well and where we're not and as you've rightfully
pointed out the indicator around it's actually a percentage of adult safeguarding inquiries
completed within 20 working days. The fact that actually we're still on a journey to improve that
and it's a performance target that we bring to the committee that we also track operationally
indicates that actually we are tracking even in areas where we're not doing particularly well.
If the committee have any suggestions in terms of we have a huge amount of data I mean if we
provided you with all the data that we hold in relation to adult social care or indeed the
directorate, you would it'd be really difficult you would be drowning in the data. So what we do
try to do is to extract the data. We also have a means within our leadership team where every
month we have quarterly reports which are more comprehensive but every month we have a bit of
a heat map that gives us an indication of areas where we probably want to focus on a little bit
more and we use that in terms of being able to determine whether we need to go deeper into
something. So in relation to the inquiries, just to address that because I know we did talk about
this last time we touched on this, if you have a look at the graph you will see that yes there
have been some dips but actually largely we are on the on an upward trajectory, it's obviously
still not where we would like it to be and there's a number of reasons for that. Some of it is
seasonal so we do know that for instance when it's towards the end of the calendar year around
November -December where we have a December -December January we have a number of staff who are taking
time off that does have an impact sometimes in our ability to be able to churn work through.
It's something we try to manage but sometimes it's quite difficult and also sometimes it depends on
the complexity of what we're faced with. So if you do have there are some safeguarding inquiries
that are incredibly complex. They may involve the police or a number of agencies and sometimes
turning stuff in 20 days is really difficult. So it's reflective of that but we've also got
Chanel here. She may want to come in in terms of her perspective but I just wanted to give that
overview. Yeah, Councillor Francis. Just to add very briefly to Georgia's comments, we do get
quite a number of police investigations that link to our safeguarding inquiries, which
we cannot close, of course we depend on them. Therefore, the delay happens out of our control.
But we are aware of that dip and we are working very hard to improve our performance and you
will see some change in the coming months.
If I may just come back, I really appreciate those responses and like I said, I think it's
really helpful for me as a Councillor to understand like the, to see the performance on the operational
side too. So I have one observation just in terms of inquiries because I actually put
a safeguarding query through to the team before so I really do understand the challenges and
especially where there's a, where police have been involved in at some point.
And on that. So I take that and I understand that that is kind of a,
I guess a forever piece of work and rightly so.
So I have a suggestion.
So a part of the service that I feel is kind of under
pressure a lot,
I have a lot of constituents coming to me about is around OT
assessments. And I think that the team
So that's particularly in relation to housing ones.
And I know that there's a crossover for transfers,
but for adaptations within people's homes,
I'm talking about, and quite a delay
because the team is facing really intense demand.
But I think it would be helpful to see performance data
in that particular area.
But that's maybe something for the next municipal term.
I'm just putting a marker down.
Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Georgie, as well. Thank you.
Now our first substantive item this evening is considering changes to the integrated cardboard
structure and some of the implications and potential impact on tower hamlets. As you
These offices in East London
as far as you can see,
This is not about them,
Our Georgia Sibani, Corporate Director, Adult Health and Social Care,
Councillor Sabina Akhtar, Cabinet Lead Member for Health, Wellbeing and Social Care.
Snell Arcut, Interim Director of Adult Social Care.
Shuman Benardji, Director of Public Health.
Matt White, Interim Director of Service Development.
Who will be interested in hearing the discussion?
Charlotte, I believe our officers have provided a steer on what this committee is looking for.
And you will have up to seven minutes to provide us with an overview.
And we will move to questions from the committee members. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, chair. And yes, Fulek and Daniel have shared the questions that you
responded to. So we have circulated a detailed briefing on the changes. So these changes are
mandated for all integrated care boards across the country following an announcement last March,
it's almost a year to the day, an announcement last March that ICBs, integrated care boards,
or ICBs would have to reduce their running costs and therefore their headcount by 50%.
That is not the same as their commissioning budgets, just to be clear that is the cost of running the operational services and their staffing budgets.
Following that, there was a further announcement that there will be a reshaping and refocusing of integrated care boards to focus on strategic commissioning
that's strategic commissioning of health care services across their patch. For us
in Northeast London that's the seven places that run from City of London and
Hackney through to Havering and Tower Hamlets is one of those places and one of those
boroughs. Alongside that change there have been other ICBs have been affected by
either mergers or clusters where there are smaller integrated care boards
they've joined together. The impact of such a significant reduction in the
running costs and in the headcount has meant that the only way they appear to
be viable is for them to merge. We have not taken that route in Northeast London
that's partly because we're already a medium -sized integrated care board our
population is 2 .2 million and fast growing as you will be well aware around
this scrutiny table and we took the view that we would we have a very strong
identity as Northeast London and wish to retain that. In last year the model ICB
blueprint set out how ICBs would need to focus on their role as a strategic
commissioner. This was about driving population health improvements so really
thinking about how do we improve the health and well -being of our local
populations not just Commission services. How do we tackle health inequalities
which we know are marked across Northeast London in areas such as healthy life expectancy, quality
of service provision, access to services and experience of services. Also that we were to
focus on those big three strategic shifts that I know we've talked about around this table before,
which was set out in the 10 -year health plan, moving from hospital -based to community care,
from treatment to prevention and from analogue to digital.
And finally, that point about how do we meet the needs of our local communities
by improving access was also a key facet of our role as Strategic Commissioner.
In order to meet that mandate from National, we were required to redesign our structures,
to redesign so that we could meet our key functions and to make sure that we
as an organisation both met the reduced budget that we were being given for
workforce and for running costs and to deliver those functions that were
required to deliver. So we are currently in the midst of a restructure. We
launched a consultation with all staff on the 1st of December which concluded
on the 21st of January of this year for staff. We also ran a consultation for our clinical
leadership over the same time period. We had over 4 ,000 pieces of feedback from staff on
the restructure and that ranged from views on the structure, on the functions, as well
as on details about capacity, what was in the job descriptions and the grades of roles.
We've shared those outcomes with staff now, so we've shared back to the organisation the final
structures, the final job descriptions, the final matching outcomes which is where individuals
understand how they will be the recruitment and selection process for staff and also the EQIA,
the equality impact assessment. At the same time as the main consultation ran, we also ran
a voluntary redundancy scheme. We had approximately 180 applications for voluntary redundancy
and we also had some applications for what's known in the NHS, I don't think it's a local
government thing particularly, for Mars which is a mutually agreed resignation scheme for
those people who are not eligible for voluntary redundancy. And as a result of that approximately
approximately 150 people will be leaving the organisation
as early as the end of March,
which obviously is coming up rapidly.
And we're also already seeing some people
leave the organisation under that,
where they have annual leave to take.
We are now following the final outcomes of the consultation.
We are now in the recruitment and selection phase.
We've just started this week.
I spent the morning interviewing.
we're just in the phase of interviewing for our director level roles. We will then move through
the tiers in the organisation to look at deputy directors, heads of service, managers, senior
managers, managers, support assistants and we're anticipating concluding all the recruitment and
selection towards the end of May. I think it's realistic it may be a bit sooner if we are able
to get there quickly.
We're doing that in a fairly structured, well,
a very structured way, but also quite at pace,
because people have been living with the uncertainty
of this restructure since March of last year.
People have been asking for certainty about timelines
and for a desire to move on quickly
to be sure of their outcomes.
We are therefore anticipating that we
will be sort of reshaping as an organisation
after that phase in May to June of this year.
Meanwhile, as people will be aware, we've carried on doing business as usual.
We've had quite a significant planning round.
We've published our system strategy, our system strategic commissioning plan,
delivered commissioning intentions, done the work of the ICB
and carry on doing the work that we need to do to improve the health of the population.
Clearly we set out in the in the briefing the sort of future structure
for the organisation and whilst we are focusing on strategic commissioning
through a department which will consist of the process through from contracting
through strategic commissioning and procurement we are also keeping a focus
on place we have a smaller but we still have a place delivery team in each
So there will be a Tower Hamlets place which will be headed up by a deputy director role.
That will focus on neighbourhood health development and making sure that we're able to support
the work that's already underway in each place on developing and delivering neighbourhood
health which we see as a real way to address those health inequalities and population health
outcomes that I started with.
Alongside that, there will be a primary care support function and medicines optimisation
function in each place so that hopefully we get a rounded team who can work in their local area.
We recognise this is a significant shift from the arrangements we had in place previously,
but we are we're proud that we've retained a function at place, that is not the case,
but all integrated care boards some have focused very much on strategic commissioning and pulling
everything into central teams. We've said we recognise that sort of real focus on working
at place to understand better our local populations, to work with the voluntary and community sector,
to work with our local government partners, to work with our local NHS partners in each
place as well. We are concurrently developing transformation proposals to support the work
in neighbourhood health and for example are investing significantly through our transformation
funding in neighbourhood health locally and happy to discuss that in a bit more detail.
Just want to emphasise before I suppose for questions that this is something not something that we initiated from the ICB
This is something that was very much mandated at a national level that we were made to be required to reduce our staffing and our
Workforce so our budgets for staffing and our staffing by 50 % that were required to focus on strategic commissioning
We have tried to imprint it with a northeast London feel
so that it does meet the needs of our local population.
Clearly, it's a significant disruption.
We recognise both for the staff directly affected
and for those staff working particularly
in integrated teams and their close partners
because there is a huge amount of change.
We're just working through with staff
who are both leaving the organisation now
but also those who will be leaving the organisation
or will be moving into new roles.
So we are capturing all the work they are doing,
highlighting where we need interim line management arrangements,
where we've got handover arrangements in place
to minimise the risks that will be evident to people
on the loss of corporate memory
and some of the relationships at place as well.
So that probably takes me to about seven minutes, if not more.
So I'll leave it there and answer the question.
Thank you.
Thank you, Charlotte, for taking the time to come and speak to us.
Of course, members have some questions.
I will take two questions at a time and ask to respond.
If we have time after the first round, I will allow for more.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
As you said, the staff is going to reduce significantly and they are roughly about one -third.
Is the volume of work also going to reduce by one -third?
How are you going to manage this?
I mean that is that is that is our big challenge because the work is not reducing. We still have
over 2 and 2 .2 million population in Northeast London. We have the same budget that we have
before. We have the same largely the same set of functions having started out anticipating that we
would be losing some functions.
That is not the case.
So we are having to change the way we work.
We're drawing some services into central teams.
You'll see from the briefing, for example,
strategic commissioning.
We'll be doing all our commissioning
on a consistent basis once for Northeast London,
but very much sort of looking to deliver local variation
within each place, both through neighbourhood health delivery
and, where necessary, in response
to the needs of the population.
But yes, I mean, it's a challenge because the work remains the same and that's been
our constant position from day one when we heard about this, that unless there was a
reduction in the number of functions which were required to deliver, it would be very
hard to deliver this.
There has been no, or very limited reduction in the functions we're required to deliver
and therefore we are having to look at different ways of working, fully working in a matrix
way, making sure that we've got processes that tie us together and some of that will
be about developing a sort of core offer across North East London so that we can do some things
more consistently with that variation where possible for each place and for local populations
and communities.
Thank you, Charlotte.
Thank you for your presentation.
On the slide 24 you said that you are going to have a team of eight people in
cover the whole ICT seven places. I just wondering the list of tasks you have
said going to the enormous and it is realistic to accept this team of eight
how we're going to carry out those whole those works? Thank you so so along
similar veins so each place will have a team of eight they won't be doing the
commissioning which teams at place currently do so the the team previously
has been what's called an integrated commissioning team has been
commissioning on behalf of the ICB in each place that function will sit
centrally in the strategic commissioning department and that will be delivered
through one of three directorates so as a directorate focused on primary care
and that's general practise but also dentistry optometry and pharmacy a
process, a directorate focused on planned care which we largely are acute services,
elective care, but also areas like maternity, and then the third area is around proactive care which
is about that move to neighbourhood commissioning, focusing on long -term conditions, really trying
to get towards earlier intervention and prevention. So some of the functions previously carried out at
place will be carried out through that that Northeast London level strategic commissioning
department and then within each place while it will be a smaller team it will
be operating as a single team so the primary care support for example is very
much embedded within the wider team and we we are focusing on neighbourhood
health delivery so although it looks like quite a long list it is a sort of
narrower list than we have currently as I mentioned we are investing in other
places in areas like clinical leadership in neighbourhood health so we think in
the round we will try wherever possible without affecting our sort of headcount
because we're restricted on what we can hold as a headcount to make sure we
manage the functions. The first year will be very much a bedding in the new
structure approach but there are things we will learn there are things we may
have to adapt and change as a result of that but we are and we have to operate
within the work workforce headcount and workforce operating costs that we've
given by national colleagues were not able to go beyond that.
So if we were to put more resources
in one part of the organisation, we
would have to remove them from elsewhere in the organisation.
So that's the way we're.
Thank you, Charlotte.
You state that your strategic commissioning department
will have a primary care commissioning directorate.
Will this mean that our resident will find it easier
to get a GP appointment or to get other GP based services such as blood test blood
paper measure everything. Thank you that's a very good question and exactly the right one to be
asking. So there are lots and lots of changes affecting primary care not least the new national
contracts which are being negotiated through the BMA at the moment. The changes which have set out
10 -year health plan for new neighbourhood health provider contracts for primary
care and multi -neighbourhood health provider contracts. We are doing quite a
lot of work to unify what we call our local enhanced services and we're using
actually the model in Tower Hamlets across the rest of Northeast London to
invest in long -term conditions which should help. Also doing a lot of
work through our Care Closer to Home programme on improved access, the same day
access for services.
So even if people come to, for example,
the front door at the Royal London,
they will instead be able to get a primary care
appointment that day, which will actually
be a better option for them.
I mean, they won't have to wait in a busy ED.
So we're doing quite a lot of work to improve primary care
access.
The work on neighbourhood health is also
seen as a way of improving access to general practise.
There were changes last year to online booking
for general practise as well. I think at heart we remain committed to those same things about
improving the access for local residents to services, improving the experience of local
residents of services and then improving the outcomes that they get from local services.
So all those things are the measures by which we'll know whether we've been successful,
but it should be a more consistent offer across North East London. As I said, we've got a
strong primary care offer in Tower Hamlets we want to build on that and we are moving more money into
primary care so outside these arrangements we are investing an additional 10 million pounds this
year in in primary care and we're looking to increase that year on year as part of that left
shift that shift towards community and primary care services and away from acute provision. So
it does some of that is enabled by taking a more strategic commissioning approach because we can
allocate resources at a sort of macro level and we should be able to invest in the areas that we
think most need it. Thank you. My second question is to you. Given the scale of internal change,
how will you maintain strong financial governance and prevent slippage in the 6 .2 billion budget
during the transition especially when new teams, managers and process are
building in.
Thank you chair, another really good question. I must say this is very much one of our the
participation of our board as you can imagine so our governance at a board
level is remaining very constant although we're making some we'll be
making some minor changes to our committee governance we are not changing
our scheme of reservation and delegation for example so we won't be changing any
of our processes.
Now that is currently putting a bit of burden on staff
because our processes require quite a few steps
to be taken towards approving services, for example.
So we will review those in light of the reduced capacity.
But at the moment, we're maintaining the same focus
on process.
I think the main area of concern is
that point about corporate memory
because people who've worked in the organisation,
worked in the area for a long time,
know how to get the best from a system,
and we're really keen that we don't lose that.
So we're not making any changes to our processes,
and that will hold us true whilst we have reduced capacity.
We're also doing quite a lot of work.
We've got an organisational development programme,
which we will build as we move through the next phases
as people are recruited into roles and take up those roles.
we'll be working on, again, who needs what sort of basic training on the processes which
are behind strategic commissioning. I'm also doing a sort of strategic commissioning development
programme for all staff which will include things like that sort of governance points, best
practise around procurement, understanding of contract management and contracts. So,
but that is all to come as we go through the process.
Thank you very much, sir, for giving me the opportunity, and thank you, Charlotte, for
the wonderful presentation.
I have two questions and a third one, sir, a follow -up to the two questions that I asked,
which are very brief and short.
From the Health Watch point of view and considering the lived experiences of the residents that
Health Watch come in touch with.
Number one, how will residents experience improvement as a result of your structural changes?
Because this is a worry and a concerning matter that you are using by 42 percent something. It's huge.
So, that's the first question.
The second question is, some residents are going to miss out, for sure.
Well, tell me, which residents are currently missing out of the services that they are
exposed to now?
You know, when budgets are cut, certain services are cut, my experience.
Could you please enlighten me, Charlotte?
Thank you very much for the questions.
So the first one, I think it's fair to say as a result of these structural changes,
we're not immediately anticipating an improvement to services.
We hope that will come with that focus on population health management,
on using neighbourhood health delivery models to their optimal and to using that strategic
commissioning capability which we'll have to improve consistency and make sure there's
a really strong core offer across North East London. But I don't think at this point we're
setting out that on their own this restructure will deliver improvements. We are really hopeful
that they will and that is the focus of our new structure but it's fair to say
a reduction of this size has inevitably meant staff have been
distracted, the workforce has been focused on the restructure and the recruitment and selection processes that go along as a result.
I think some of the things which will improve are that consistency, are that focus on using population health management data really strongly,
making sure we're really listening to residents through our neighbourhood health approaches
and continuing to work really closely with our system partners, whether they're in local government
or across the NHS, voluntary community, faith and social enterprise sector and with local residents.
In terms of missing out, I just want to underline that the commissioning budgets are not reducing as a result of this.
We're not spending less money on services, we're spending the same amount of money on services
as we were last year with a slight slight adjustment for growth so if this
this restructure will not lead to a direct service decommissioning or
recommissioning separately through as with any commissioning organisation we
look at what the needs of our local people population are telling us where
there's best practise we can emulate where we can sort of well we've got new
in emerging needs that we haven't met, we will look to do that.
But that is, as I say, we are not reducing our commissioning budgets
as a result of these changes.
Yeah, one last, you know,
then you mentioned that the budget is not going to be reduced.
Am I right? The commissioning budget is not reducing.
The workforce running cost budget is reducing by 50 percent.
But the point of concern here is if the budget is not being reduced,
but the manpower is and to man the budget, you have less people here now.
How is this metrics going to work?
And the last question is, when will the committee, I mean your committee,
see evidence that the outcomes of the new structure that is being imposed,
What is the time frame that we will see that these outcomes have improved?
Any evidence?
Sorry.
Thank you.
So I think that echoes the two questions that were asked earlier about reduced capacity.
There will be reduced capacity.
That's why we've restructured because we recognise just salami slicing teams in the previous structure would not deliver the focus that we need.
So we believe that our new structure uses the reduced workforce we have to best effect.
So a real focus on strategy, on data and insights and intelligence and on population health.
A real focus on commissioning, being able to contract effectively for what our population needs
and then able to procure services and retaining a real focus on neighbourhood health delivery.
We believe in the round that really should, despite the reduction in our workforce,
enable us to focus on improving the health of our population and staying true to our aims as an ICB.
So I think that's really important.
And I just come back to the fact that we are looking, and there's been quite a lot of information around about what it is to be a strategic commissioner,
which is to work at a really macro level to make the difference in the big things like you mentioned access to general practise making
sure that people can get the elective care that they need that people are being cared for by
the
And it really is an opportunity
in light of the
Tenure health plan to focus on prevention and early intervention, which I know we talked a lot about in the health and well -being board
is an area that we really want to focus on doing more.
We can't carry on doing the same thing we've always been doing.
We recognise that because our health needs are increasing
without sort of really addressing prevention
and early intervention sooner.
Thank you.
Mark, do you have any comment or any question tonight?
Thank you.
I just wanted to, thanks, Cher.
thank you for the presentation as well, Charlotte. I appreciate how difficult this must be for an
organisation to be required to reduce its staff into to this extent. So my question is less about
the kind of the operational upshot of that and just so I have a recollection that there was
some discussions going on between the NHS and the Treasury about who had
responsibility for covering the costs of redundancy and so I just wondered if you
could bring us up to date what was the outcome of those conversations did the
NHS or did Department of Health get anything that was useful for ICBs?
the question. So it was useful. It wasn't additional funding, but the Treasury enabled
us to use funding that was in the budget for next year in this financial year to pay redundancy
costs. So that means that we were able to make the changes in this financial year so
that we go into next year, although we're just, the decision for this to happen took
place very late so we're not entirely there but during next year our running cost budget
will be lower and as our allocation is lower we will overspend it by less than we would
otherwise have done by being able to pay redundancies out of this financial year's allocation.
I hope that makes sense. It wasn't additional funding as such, it was a facility to use
funding from next financial year in this financial year, which was extremely useful.
Thank you.
Thank you, Charlotte. I don't understand one of the things, just can you explain this?
On the slide 28, you set out some details, how will deputy clinical director put clinical knowledge
into the commissioning various services.
So there is some specific no mention
on the contract monitoring.
So will those directors have clinical input
on contact and monitoring too?
Thank you.
So the structure across strategic commissioning
and the clinical and quality commissioning departments
sort of mirrors each other.
So contracting happens
in the strategic commissioning department.
The process of commissioning is informed
by the clinical leads from the clinical commissioning
department.
So we'd anticipate by the time we get to transact and enact
through contracts, there will have
been a strong clinical voice in determining what the needs are,
how we might best address them, how we might best
use NICE guidance, rather than clinicians involved directly
in the contracting process.
So involved in determining what the specification is,
what some of the key performance metrics are,
what some of the key outcome and quality metrics are,
and then that was transacted to the contracting
department directorate which will sit in the strategic commissioning department
rather than in the clinical commissioning department.
Once again thank you Charlotte for attending today and providing us with
the information on the issue and given that our morale will be impacted and we
will keeping a watchful eye as the situation materialises. Thank you. And you
are feel free to leave and if you want to stay with us and break with us it's
up to you. We'll be very happy if you join with us.
Thank you.
So our final item for this evening will be focusing on community equipment services.
I know we have received both a briefing note and responses for the action log, but it's
helpful that the service has come here to provide more details to this.
So with this, I can now welcome back again, Councillor Sabina, cabinet lead member for
health, wellbeing and social care, Matt White, interim director service development. You will
have five minutes to give this committee an overview. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, chair and
to the committee members. Like you said, we did have a discussion in the last committee, but we're
happy here again to come forward and discuss the next kind of steps that some of the decisions that
we've made from last time. So as you all are aware, community equipment plays a vital role
in supporting residents to live independently and safely in the homes. NRS previously have
been providing community equipment here in Tower Hamlets and other 21 boroughs nationally. Due to
difficulties and challenges and RS had collapsed and we as a council had to
respond very quickly because obviously we are dealing with the most vulnerable
and most needy people in our borough and in response to that council officers and
staff we decided to go for a continue to business continue to where we had an
in -house service providing the community equipments.
And as you all may be aware, it has been some time,
but we couldn't continue with that service.
We needed something in the long term, more stable.
And that is why we've had further discussions
and further reviews and careful consideration
of the kind of available commissioning options.
And a decision has been taking place in cabinet
to proceed with a direct award to enable living health care for the continued
delivery of the community equipment service. Enabled living health care is a
well -established provider of community equipment services and has extensive
experience living these services across a number of local authorities and NHS
areas. The decision to make a direct award ensures continuity of services,
stability for residents and avoid disruption to a service that many
vulnerable residents rely on. Also during the interim process of delivery we had
enable living care also you know provide so we know that somewhere they're safe
to go to places. So we're here today to take questions from the members and I
like to make an apology because there are a couple of typos because we turned
this round quickly so if you look at page 110 the most obvious one is that
CMT and it should say scrutiny is asked to recommend the second bit is on point
two under the recommendations where it says enable living health care for the
Provision of community equipment on a three plus two contract that should say two plus one. Yeah, so
apologies
Council act has covered most of the main areas the things I would say is we are continuing to run our business continuity
Service until we are able to fully implement this service in April
That service is still continuing to run. Well, I'm gonna get once again
We'd like to thank all the rest of the council who have been involved in providing that service because it's still running
But this is the right time for us to move to a permanent arrangement
and
It is entirely appropriate that we can direct award under emergency procedures. We are very confident that
enabled living will be able
For two years and possibly an extension period to be able to provide those those equipment services
for us on an ongoing basis the other thing that we will enable which the
scrutiny has asked before is for us to start to provide some real performance
data because as we move on to this contract we get a platform with system
on it because what we're doing at the moment is kind of half analogue and half
IT but once we implement in April we will then start to see real performance
metrics and real performance data.
So yes, so that's just some additional information.
Thank you, Sabina.
Thank you, Matt, for your overview.
Now, members, your time.
Again, I will take two questions at a time.
and if we have time after that, the first round,
I will allow for more, thank you.
Thank you, chair.
It is a two question, I will take two, two advantage.
Thank you, Sabina, and thank you, Wait, Matt.
Thank you for the updates.
I got a couple of question.
And firstly, as a local representative,
we come across many residents who ask about
the temporary housing services which is now is run more than such a longer time
and its plan and what the risk has been identified and increase as a result the
first question and second question is how can you assure us the resident have
been missed out of Ricks while data and referral and bring managed by manually
this the true question thank you this class for clarification of the first
questions or clarification of the first question clarification of the first one
is like you know you know temporary accommodation why taking so longer than
plan and what is that as a result increase identify you know what you've
identified issues and problems and why is so longer than as a normal fun
So this paper is talking about community equipment service. Community equipment service is the
equipment that we generally provide to people to support them to maintain their independence
at home. It may be if they've had a hospital admission and they need to leave, so it may be
a raised toilet seat, it may be a hospital bed and so forth. So if you are in temporary accommodation,
regardless whether you're in permanent or temporary accommodation, if you have a need
for community equipment, you will be provided with that community equipment.
Does that answer your question, Councillor?
That's what the resident asked for.
Okay, so you...
So if there were any...
Because I was getting confused, like, why are you asking about temporary accommodation?
Okay, that's it.
And like Georgia said, yeah, absolutely, it's about the need of that particular person,
so wherever they are.