Our constitution
The integrated care board members will oversee how money is spent and make sure that health services work well and are of high quality, bringing together hospitals and community providers, primary care (for example GPs, community services, dental services, pharmacy), local councils, hospices, voluntary, community and social enterprise sector organisations and Healthwatch partners in our local places. To help enable this, we have a constitution.
The constitution is an important document that sets out what the board will do and how it will work. We developed the constitution following NHS England guidance and with the support of our partners and stakeholder. The involvement period in 2021 produced responses from partners, external stakeholders, and members of the public. You can read the feedback here.
To support the constitution, there is a governance handbook, which was agreed by the ICB Board at its meeting on 1 July. This sets out how decisions are made, and the arrangements needed to do this. It builds on our existing collaborative work to establish more robust mutual accountability and break down barriers between our separate organisations. The key elements of our governance handbook are:
- How we make decisions - a summary of our approach
- Functions and decisions map
- Scheme of reservation and delegation
- Financial scheme of delegation
- Operational scheme of delegation
- Standing financial instructions
- Terms of reference for ICB committees
Governance policies
- Conflicts of interest
- Involvement framework
- Risk management policy and framework
- Standards of business conduct
Accountability
The integrated board is formally accountable to NHS England. NHS England will carry out an annual assessment of the board’s performance and will publish a report summarising its assessment. NHS England has powers to intervene if it is satisfied that the ICB is failing to discharge any of its functions.