There are two concurrent pieces of work being undertaken by West Yorkshire ICB Contracting and Procurement, and Power of Communities Teams:

Place based and regional spend on the VCSE sector

The aim of this is to try and establish what is spent with the VCSE. There are some current challenges with this data due to gaps and anomalies in the way that it is coded across West Yorkshire, therefore, the team is working through a manual process and liaising with Places to understand gaps in information. There is also a current gap in terms of the funding that is flowing through NHS providers or the Council as opposed to the ICB directly. Again, we are working with Places to understand this better.

The next step will be to try and establish the 24/25 planned spend with a view to quantify any investment/disinvestment, where this is etc.

There is significant variation across our Places which we would expect, partly due to the population, but we also hope that giving Places this detail will help them to benchmark and plan for the future. We will also be using the data and linking it to some of the wider work around tackling health inequalities.

An interim update was given by Places to the System Oversight Group following on from a letter from Jonathan Webb and Kim Shutler asking for progress against the ICB agreed actions.

Once the work has been further refined it will be taken to ICB for consideration and shared with local Places.

Keep it local

Earlier this year WY Partnership signed up to be the first Keep it Local ICS in the country. This follows on from all 5 Councils in West Yorkshire.

The KIL Principles very much align to work in Places and at a West Yorkshire level but it was felt that this framework would provide a way to pull our work together and provide a refocus, particularly, in the light of the current financial challenges.

Work in this area has also been agreed in the personal objectives of a number of senior finance and contracting colleagues.

Some of this was ‘launched’ this week with an initial workshop held in Bradford for West Yorkshire contracting colleagues (who as part of the Operating Model Review have now come together as one central team). It was also attended by colleagues from the Place based VCSE Infrastructure organisations and a number of Place based commissioners.

The aims were to:

• raise awareness of the VCSE and Keep it Local
• share some examples of the ‘art of the possible’ when it comes to bold and creative commissioning and contracting
• surface some of the challenges and barriers for NHS colleagues which may get in the way when commissioning the VCSE
• start to identify clear actions to address these.

A poll ahead of the meeting showed that around 40% of the contracting colleagues surveyed did not have experience of working with the VCSE, therefore, this gives us a benchmark to work on.

There was a strong will in the room to identify opportunities to share practice as well as to agree some standardised principles at a WY level which can support a number of things including (but not limited to):

• Better proportionality in procurement where this is currently acting as a barrier
• Supporting and safeguarding the vital role of smaller, grass roots and diverse local organisations
• Improved clarity around the use of the Provider Selection Regime legislation and how this can support the KIL agenda
• A WY approach to enabling better demonstration of social value in line with KIL principles
• Better sharing of best practice across Places
• Better clarity on compliance with regulatory requirements whilst still enabling creativity and being bold in this space.

The next steps are to review the actions and develop an associated action plan. Whilst this is a longer-term piece of work and will take some time we are hopeful that there may be some quick wins which will make a difference.