This week, in my keynote speech to the institute of government, I reflected on 10 years of devolution, Greater Manchester’s next steps, and the change needed for further growth.

I emphasised the power of place — where people live must be central to government growth plans.

I also talked about GM Live Well, a movement for community-led health and wellbeing. This is our commitment to everyday support in every neighbourhood, bringing a radical shift in public service delivery, collaborating with people and communities to reduce health, social, and economic inequalities.

At last week’s ICP Board, we discussed primary care’s critical role in Live Well and ongoing neighbourhood initiatives. A standardised Live Well offer will help people manage life’s pressures, improve wellbeing, and find purpose through good work. This will ease strain on public services by optimising resources and focusing on collective community needs.

Place-based integration allows meaningful partnerships between public service teams and community groups, providing personalised, preventative support. If embedded properly, GM Live Well can alleviate NHS pressure — around a third of GP calls stem from social rather than medical needs. Same-day Live Well appointments could free up significant GP capacity.

I and other members of the ICP Board acknowledge the current uncertainty the recent NHS Reform announcements may bring and recognise the impact on our partners and the communities we serve – but also our dedicated ICB colleagues. All our partners are a vital part of our Greater Manchester family, providing invaluable public services, and we thank you all for your ongoing commitment.

Andy Burnham

Mayor of Greater Manchester

Co-chair, Greater Manchester Integrated Care Partnership

Since July 2024, NHS Greater Manchester has been working more closely with NHS England to deliver a set of formalised agreed actions under one Single Improvement Plan (often referred to as SIP) to deliver changes and make improvements in the care of people living in Greater Manchester.

This process is referred to legally as ‘Enforcement Undertakings’. The plan hinges on four key pillars:

• Leadership and governance
• Financial sustainability
• Performance and assurance
• Quality of care

Progress update

There are 36 undertakings in total and, earlier this month, NHS GM presented an interim six-month review of progress against these undertakings to NHS England. This concluded that:

• NHS GM is compliant with 19 undertakings
• NHS GM is compliant with nine undertakings, with ongoing monitoring to be continued
• NHS continues to make progress against the undertakings but is yet to fully achieve compliance in eight of them – note: this is within the plan’s current timescales

This position represents significant progress for our organisation and NHS England has acknowledged the scale and pace of work that has been completed.

New Partner Member appointed for NHS GM Integrated Care Board

Current Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Public Health at Bolton Council, Sean Fielding was successfully appointed as the new Partner Member for NHS GM Integrated Care Board, replacing Paul Dennett.

With experience of working across a variety of roles providing strategic leadership in both public and private sector organisations, Cllr Fielding will bring the perspective of working with Local Authorities as well as his strong relationships across Greater Manchester's health and care sector to the Board.

Cllr Fielding was welcomed to Board in his new role on Wednesday 26 March.

Chair for Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust announces retirement

Mark Jones has announced he is to retire from his role as Chair at Writhtington, Wigan and Leigh (WWL) in June 2025.

Mark joined WWL  in November 2021.  He brought experience with him from a long-standing and respected international and domestic career in the Pharma Industry and, prior to joining WWL, he was a Non-Executive Director at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (LHCH). People, organisational culture and values have been central to his approach, and he has been a passionate, dedicated, visible and respected leader both internally and externally during his time at WWL.

The GM Workforce Summit took place on Tuesday 25 March at the iconic People’s History Museum, bringing together over 100 health and care leaders to refresh our GM People and Culture Strategy.

Key highlights of the day included an introduction from Janet Wilkinson, Chief People Officer, for one final time before retiring after a remarkable 39 years working in the NHS, followed by a keynote speech by Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, who reflected on the progress made since the launch of the People and Culture Strategy in 2022.

 Colleagues engaged in group discussions facilitated by Boo Coaching and Consulting, heard from our CIPD panel on tackling workplace inequalities and making inclusion meaningful, and took part in workshops contributing to the refresh of the People and Culture Strategy.

Thank you to everyone that joined us for the summit including exhibitors, workshop leads and our insightful panellists. Further information on how to get involved with the upcoming strategy refresh to follow soon. 

A team of clinicians from Singapore travelled to Greater Manchester for a month-long study visit to learn how health and care services work together to improve delirium care. 

Delirium - a sudden and severe state of confusion - can affect people of all ages, though it is more common in older adults. Those living with dementia are at a higher risk of experiencing delirium. If left untreated, it can lead to prolonged hospital stays, increased complications, and a greater likelihood of requiring long-term care. In response, Greater Manchester has adopted a groundbreaking, community-first approach, enabling early diagnosis and care at home rather than in hospital.

Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, 
Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust and North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust have successfully been awarded funding, which will see them benefit from new rooftop solar power and renewable schemes to save money on their energy bills, thanks to a total £200 million investment from the UK government and Great British Energy. 

In England around £100 million in funding will support nearly 200 NHS sites, covering a third of NHS trusts, to install rooftop solar panels that could power wards and operations, with potential to sell leftover energy back to the grid. The first panels are expected to be in  hospitals by the end of summer 2025.

Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) and the Northern Care Alliance (NCA) have been working collaboratively to manage the phased transition of services previously held by Pennine Acute NHS Trust.

With three phases of disaggregation already complete, the fourth phase, will include the disaggregation of Trauma and Orthopaedics (T&O) services.

Disaggregation means fully integrating North Manchester General Hospital (NMGH), previously managed by Pennine Care, into MFT, while the NCA continues to oversee the remaining three Pennine Care hospitals.

From Monday 31 March, new T&O referrals from the North Manchester catchment area will come directly into MFT, ensuring patients receive an end-to-end service from a single provider rather than having care split across MFT and NCA. However, patients will still have the option to choose either an MFT or NCA care pathway.

This collaboration aims to enhance service continuity and streamline care for patients across the region.

Stockport is trialling a new way of improving residents’ mental and physical wellbeing focusing on physical activity through a social prescribing scheme.

Stockport Council is delivering the Wellbeing Prescription in partnership with Life Leisure, Age UK Stockport, Viaduct Care CIC, and local GP surgeries in Brinnington and Bramhall. The prescription offers a non-medical activity-focused solution for patients and residents who may be feeling low, lonely, or in need of a lifestyle change.

The 8-week mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for cancer programme, run by NHS Heywood, Middleton, and Rochdale Talking Therapies, a partnership between Pennine Care NHS and The Big Life Group, supports people who have completed intensive cancer treatments such as radiotherapy, chemotherapy or surgery can now book onto the 2025

Kay Andrews, 36, completed the programme after struggling to adapt to life following her cancer diagnosis. She explained: "The sessions focused my mind on the here and now. For the first time, I felt grounded and could find happiness in simple things like the sun and being in nature.

Studies have proven that mindfulness can help people feel less stressed, reduce worry and over-thinking, and improve sleep and tiredness.

In a first for the Greater Manchester region, five learners from Oldham College are gaining real-world experience as midwives by embarking on industry placements within the NHS.

These learners will undergo Midwifery observation placements this spring, on the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust’s (NCA) Cadet Programme. In their second year, they will progress onto a full 10-week placement.

The NCA Cadet Programme is offered in partnership with Oldham College as part of its Health T Levels.

Back in 2022 NHS Greater Manchester launched the 'As Soon As You’re Pregnant' (ASAP) campaign, with the primary aim of encouraging people to book with a midwife before 10 weeks pregnant to ensure relevant screening could be carried out.

Late last year further conversations with midwives, other health care professionals and pregnant people told us that we needed to widen the scope of the campaign to focus not just on screening but also vaccinations. Insight also suggested that some people felt unprepared for pregnancy and that the information that they were given was often incomplete, resulting in them feeling overwhelmed. We therefore took the decision to include early pregnancy information as part of the campaign.

The flagship resource for this campaign is the As Soon As You’re Pregnant website. Easy to read and navigate, the website contains key information in bite size chunks.

Get To Know Where To Go: Spring 2025

The latest Get to Know Where to Go campaign communications toolkit from NHS GM is all about making sure residents are well prepared, particularly on the run up to bank holidays, and know where to go to get the care they need. If people know what to do and where to go when they need extra help or support – then they get the right treatment sooner.

You can help by sharing information on your website and social media channels (if you have them).

The toolkit can be downloaded from the Campaign Resource Centre on the NHS GM website.

The A-Z service finder is now live on the GMICP website

Members of the public and service users can now search for health services in Greater Manchester alphabetically or by borough, making it easier to find the health service they need, quickly.

We are adding to our service finder all the time with details of important services such as mental health, long covid support, eating disorder services and social prescribing.

If you have a service you would like to add to the website, please get in touch by emailing gmhscp.digital@nhs.net 

A quicker, easier way to pay for adult travel across Bee Network buses and trams has landed in Greater Manchester. From Sunday 23 March, contactless tap and go is the hassle-free way to pay – and know you’ll be charged the best fare.

Simply tap your contactless card, phone or smart watch and the system will do the maths. Keep tapping with the same card or device and you’ll pay the cheapest fare based on the number of journeys you make.

For buses you’ll pay no more than £5/day or £20/week to make as many journeys as you like. And if you regularly use both buses and trams, you’ll get unlimited travel for a max of £9.50/day or £41/week.

Greater Manchester Wins Global Award for Leadership in Creating a Smokefree City-Region

Greater Manchester has been honoured with a 2025 Partnership for Healthy Cities Award 2025 in recognition of its pioneering work to reduce smoking rates and creating a smoke-free city region – helping 126,000 people quit smoking through its ambitious Making Smoking History programme.

NHS GM shortlisted for a HSJ Digital Award

NHS GM is thrilled to announce its shortlisting in the Reducing Health Inequalities through Digital category at the HSJ Digital Awards 2025. Matthew Conroy and Aseem Mishra are being recognised for their work on reducing the burden of Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) across Greater Manchester (GM) using the CVNeed tool.

Colleagues will find out if they are successful at the awards ceremony on the 26 June.