Health and care policy and guidance

Health and Social care

The Health and Care Act 2022 is the most recent amendment to the overall healthcare legislation in England. A key change is the establishment of Integrated Care Systems (ICS), joint health and care partnerships of commissioners and providers.

The King’s Fund’s Making Sense of the 2022 Health and Care Act explains all the changes the Act brings about.

The Care Act 2014 is the legislation governing adult social care provision and eligibility in England.

SCIE’s Introduction to the Care Act 2014 video explains the basics of the Act.  

In September 2021, the Government put forward its plan to reform adult social care. It must also respond to an independent review of children’s social care, published in May 2022.

The Department for Health and Social Care has announced the development of a Major Conditions Strategy that will set out a shift to integrated, whole-person care, building on the measures in the NHS Long Term Plan.

NHS Planning Guidance and Long Term Plan

The NHS Long Term Plan was first published in 2019 as the overall plan for the NHS. A key focus is collaborative and personalised care planning and delivery. It forms part of the annual NHS priorities and operational planning guidance.

Integrated Care Systems

Integrated Care Systems (ICS) are the structures introduced in 2022, through which health, social care and some of the wider determinants of health are to be coordinated and delivered. Health system responsibilities will be different between ICSs and national bodies such as NHS England, as set out in their operating framework.

Within each ICS, an Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) is responsible for co-producing an Integrated Care Strategy with local health and care partners. In August 2022, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) produced statutory guidance on the preparation of integrated care strategies. 

The Integrated Care Board (ICB) is the statutory NHS body responsible for developing a Five Year Joint Forward Plan. In the first year, ICBs have until June 2023 to consult on and finalise these.  In December 2022, NHSE produced guidance on developing the joint forward plans.

NHS England has produced a suite of guidance for ICBs, including:

• key documents for integrated care systems
• implementation guidance on partnerships with the voluntary sector
• statutory guidance on working in partnership with people and communities

In 2023, the Health and Social Care Committee and the Hewitt Review consulted on the autonomy and accountability of ICSs and the government published its response.

Health and Social care

In Northern Ireland, the key legislation for the way the Health and Social Care (HSC) system is coordinated and delivered is the Health and Social Care (Reform) Act (Northern Ireland) 2009. The Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety’s Framework Document (2011) describes the roles and functions of the various health and social care bodies and the systems that govern their relationships. 

Health policy is guided by the Making Life Better framework for public health and the themes of health and wellbeing, and health inequalities, therein. 

The Health and Wellbeing 2026: Delivering Together plan written in 2016, paves the way for the 2022 system reconfiguration including one Integrated Care System (ICS). 

Integrated Care System

Under the Health and Social Care Act (Northern Ireland) 2022, the HSC is directly accountable to Government with the migration of the HSC Board in April 2022. 

The implementation of the Integrated Care System is still under consultation. Within this, regional Area Integrated Partnership Boards (AIPB) will replace Local Commissioning Groups (LCG) and end the purchaser / provider split.

More information is set out in the Department of Health’s Integrated Care System NI Draft Framework.

Health and Social care

The commissioning and provision of healthcare was brought together under Scottish government legislation by the Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002 and the National Health Service Reform (Scotland) Act 2004.

The Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014 and its Statutory Guidance introduced Health and Social Care Partnerships. This means NHS Boards and Local Authorities jointly fund, plan and provide health and care, mostly through Integration Joint Boards (IJB).

The Healthcare Quality Strategy for NHS Scotland (May 2010) set out how NHS Scotland aims to deliver the highest quality healthcare services to people in Scotland.

In 2011, the Scottish Government published its 2020 Vision for Health and Social Care. This set out the strategic vision for achieving sustainable quality in the delivery of healthcare services across Scotland. This has now been archived, but it set the vision for the national policies and plans that followed.

The National Health and Wellbeing Outcomes Framework sets the expectations against which Boards, Local Authorities and Partnerships write their strategic plans and report their annual performance. 

The Health and Social Care Delivery Plan was published in December 2016 to implement the Healthcare Standards. This strengthened the role of Health and Social Care Partnerships to plan and deliver well-coordinated care that is timely and appropriate to people's needs. It also called for greater collaboration around and between NHS Boards.

The Scottish Government has introduced a Bill which aims to establish a National Care Service to sit alongside and mirror the National Health Service.

Health and Social Care

The National Health Service Wales Act 2006 is the primary health legislation in Wales.

NHS Wales’ overview of Primary legislation and statutory instruments explains its main policy areas.

The key legislation for social care is the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014. It established joint working between the NHS and Local Authorities in Regional Partnership Boards (RPB).

More information is detailed in this Overview of the Social Services and Well-being Act from Social Care Wales.  

The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 sets out a framework for all public sector bodies to work together and with their communities to improve the well-being of people in Wales. 

It is explained in this Welsh Government Guide to the Well-being of Future Generations Act.

The Health and Social Care (Quality and Engagement) (Wales) Act 2020 strengthens the duty for NHS bodies to improve quality and the right for citizens to have a voice in their care.

A summary of the Health and Social Care Quality and Engagement Act is available from the Welsh Government.

This legislation underpins the Welsh Government’s Programme for Government and the key health and social care plan: A Healthier Wales, which were published in 2021.

The plans are supported by the National Clinical Framework. This proposes a clinically-led NHS Wales Executive as well as national programmes of work driven by quality statements.

NHS Wales sets out its plans to implement the vision of A Healthier Wales in the NHS Wales planning framework 2022-2025.  These are the ministerial priorities for 2023. 

There are national templates for NHSE contracts and grant agreements.

The NHSE Payment Scheme annual inflation uplift factor minus efficiency factor currently stands at 3.4%. This was updated on 11th May 2023 to account for the 5% Agenda for Change pay award. The final figure is awaiting the medical pay award.

The payment scheme refers to aligned payment and incentive contracts, as promoted by the NHSE PEoLC funding approaches, but these would be based on palliative care and last year of life currencies with no national unit or guide prices.

The pay award guidance describes the additional uplift as being for providers and services ‘in scope’ of the NHS payment scheme. Where provider staff are not on Agenda for Change and local payment arrangements are in place, any changes to local prices will depend on the terms of the agreed contract or be by local agreement.

40% of English adult hospices received equivalent matching uplifts last year; this should set a precedent for all hospice contract negotiations.

In April 2023, the Department of Health described the budget allocation as a flat cash budget; essentially a cut in service funding.

The Scottish Government allocates funding for the health and social care budget. The Scottish resource allocation formula passes on 70% of the NHS budget to the 14 NHS Boards as target shares based on weighted capitation.

These take into account the Agenda for Change 7.5% pay award so as a minimum this should be passed on in all contracts.

The Welsh Government sets the funding for the Health Board revenue allocations. These equate to a 1.5% uplift in recurrent funding before the Agenda for Change pay award has been agreed.

Within this, Health Boards have a ring-fenced allocation for palliative care which has remained static at £5.339 million for the past five years. Separately, the national NHS Executive holds £2.2 million specifically to fund hospices. 

In May 2023, the Minister for Health and Social Services committed in a letter to the Cross-Party Group (CPG) to working with Health Boards to embed inflationary uplifts into existing funding allocations and better contracts for hospices.

As a minimum, these should match the general 1.5% uplift.