Shelford Group writes letter to NHSE CEO Sir James Mackey and Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting MP

20 March 2025 · Shelford Group

class=”entry-content”> Shelford Group Chair Kirsten Major, Chief Executive of Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and Shelford Group Vice Chair Professor Clive Kay, Chief Executive of King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, have this week written to NHSE CEO Sir James Mackey and Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting MP to affirm the Shelford Group’s commitment to support both them and the wider NHS through the current period of organisational change.

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Reforms to DHSC and NHS England

Dear Secretary of State and Sir Jim,

The Shelford Group is a collaboration between ten of the largest teaching and research NHS hospital trusts in England. We are writing to affirm our commitment to support you and the wider NHS through this period of radical change. We are ambitious about what a reformed NHS can deliver for patients by improving access to high-quality care. Alongside the 10 Year Health Plan, these reforms can help to overcome post-pandemic challenges and ensure we have a sustainable NHS for future generations.

As NHS Trust leaders, we know that provider organisations are eager to lead local service improvement and deliver accountability for performance and finances. We are committed to the three shifts of illness to prevention, hospital to community, and analogue to digital. We are equally committed to service integration and partnership working at local level. To enable this to happen there is an opportunity to reset the operating model of the NHS so that it works more effectively on behalf of patients. We can retain the best of local collaboration and system working while ensuring that we have a leaner, more streamlined way of operating that enables and supports provider leaders to focus on what matters most to patients.

We would like to work with you to develop the new operating model and support colleagues across the NHS through this period of major change. We have laid out some initial thoughts below and would welcome the opportunity to explore these ideas in greater depth.

• At national level, we agree that the role of a combined DHSC/NHSE should be to set system rules with coherent financial and operational policy to underpin them including clear financial flows and consistent provider oversight. This will help to remove the duplication that exists when national, regional, and system teams all separately and in different ways drive strategy, oversee providers, and hold them to account.

• At regional level, we see a need for an intermediate tier of strategic commissioners that combines the best of the ICB and SHA models. These commissioners should be responsible for contracting nonspecialised services, ensuring patients have a choice of provider, and ensuring adherence to national p

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