The NHS Medium Term Planning Framework (MTPF) marks a milestone moment in system reform - a shift from the short-term transactional planning, to multi-year, place-based planning and co-ordination at a neighbourhood level. It asks neighbourhoods to become the organising unit for joined up care - where primary care, social care, local government, VCSE organisations…

Cross-sector collaborations and alliances are increasingly becoming the norm in the public sector. In my sphere of work, over recent years, we have seen the introduction of Integrated Care Partnerships, Primary Care Networks, Provider Collaboratives and Safeguarding Partnerships. More recently, policy from the 10 year plan has opened up the path to Neighbourhood Health Services…

“What's the problem we’re trying to solve?” comes up all the time in meetings in public service partnerships.

Superficially, it seems like an easy question to define. In public services we don't have a shortage of issues... Access to see a GP, hospital waiting times, housing lists, health and social inequalities, and workforce pressures. Yet in…

Sustaining the Neighbourhood Health Centres of the FutureMy last blog on team management in neighbourhood health centres sparked energetic debate in LinkedIn and beyond - and rightly so. Direct messages from people have been appreciative of the inclusion of some theoretical perspectives and evidence from the management literature -…

Do we really need to rip up and redraw organisational charts? 

The ChallengeNeighbourhood health centres are now a flagship policy direction for the NHS in England. NHS England has issued 2025/26 guidance for integrated care boards (ICBs) to progress neighbourhood health ahead of the new 10-Year Health Plan; the government…

The NHS’s 10-Year Plan paints a compelling vision: health services rooted in neighbourhoods, driven by prevention, and delivered in partnership. It’s a shift from crisis response to proactive, person-centred care.

But vision without collaborative execution risks becoming another “grand strategy” that dies in the committee room. The real work—the knotty, political, relationship-driven work—happens in how partners collaborate…

Complex, multidimensional problems that resist simple fixes are known as wicked problems. The interdependence, ambiguity, and existence of numerous parties with competing interests are frequently the characteristics of these issues. As opposed to tame problems, which have a straightforward solution & can be resolved with conventional linear problem-solving techniques, wicked problems are rarely easily solved.…