Our Improvement Board

In line with the direction of travel towards partnership working across local systems, the previously separate oversight and improvement arrangements for Trusts and Clinical Commissioning Groups are now being combined into the NHS System Oversight Framework (SOF). 

Under this new framework, those Trusts and systems identified as experiencing the most significant and complex challenges in achieving financial sustainability and/or high quality care will receive mandatory intensive support, through the national Recovery Support Programme. 

Following assessment against the SOF criteria, UHMBT has been given access to mandatory national intensive support and placed in SOF segment 4 and the Recovery Support Programme. 

What this means is that the NHS regionally and nationally will work collaboratively with us and local partners across Morecambe Bay to better understand the root causes of the challenges we face, agree, and deliver a package of intensive support, and set and monitor progress against an improvement plan which would allow us to exit out of the programme in a sustainable way. 

The Trust is already receiving support through a regional System Improvement Board and Improvement Director as well as executive support to the Medical Director and Director of Nursing. The Recovery Support Programme will give us access to additional expertise and resources, to ensure sustainable improvements are made as quickly as possible.

We welcome the support we are receiving from NHS England and Improvement and other partners, and on behalf of the leadership team, we can assure you that we take the challenges ahead of us extremely seriously, including recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is now time to continue our work with our partners to make any changes required at pace and ensure they are embedded so we can offer the highest quality of safe and effective care to patients for years to come.   

This decision is not a reflection of all those staff who have worked so tirelessly for patients this year, but an opportunity for us all to work together to build better and more sustainable services for those patients for the future.  

More information on the System Oversight Framework can be found on the NHSE/I website at england.nhs.uk

The colleagues that have joined us as part of this work are:

  • Jo Burrows, NHS England Improvement Director
  • Jane McNicholas, UHMBT Chief Medical Officer
  • Lynne Wyre, UHMBT Interim Chief Nursing Officer