March 2015 has seen the publication of a suite of important health and planning documents.
On the health front, The Mayor of London, NHS England (London), Public Health England, London Councils and the 32 GP-led Clinical Commissioning Groups have come together to outline how, individually and collaboratively, they will work towards London becoming the world’s healthiest major city. Better Health for London: Next Steps sets out their shared ambitions and how they will measure progress towards a set of shared goals.
The new partnership has been established in response to the challenges set out in the London Health Commission’s Better Health for London report and the NHS Five Year Forward View published in Autumn 2014.
Alongside the Next Steps document, London’s 32 GP-led Clinical Commissioning Groups and NHS England (London) have also jointly published their more detailed plans to make London the world’s healthiest global city, Transforming London’s Health and Care Together.
The 13 clinical and enabling transformation programmes include the development of a new way of working for GPs, which is set out more fully in Transforming Primary Care in London: a Strategic Commissioning Framework. The framework is based on three aspects – proactive care, accessible care and coordinated care – which, together, will enable GPs to deliver a more effective and consistent service to London’s diverse population, regardless of the severity and complexity of its health needs.
Finally, March has also seen the adoption of the Further Alterations to the London Plan and the publication of a consolidated and updated version of the London Plan. The new Plan sets ambitious targets for new housing in order to meet the demands generated by London’s growing population and economy. The new housing targets are almost a third higher than the previous 2011 Plan targets and are intended to achieve an annual average increase in units across London of around 42,000 new homes per annum over the next ten years. There are also numerous changes to the supporting text in the Plan to reflect the changes to health resulting from the implementation of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, although the main policies relating to health remain substantially the same.