Decision details

(1)  To agree that the Council participates in the Integrated Care System (ICS) for Bath, Swindon & Wiltshire and to ensure appropriate representation on the various committees which make up the ICS.

(2)  To request the Leader of the Council to make the appropriate nominations for councillors to sit on the committees making up the ICS.

(3)  To authorise the Chief Executive Officer to nominate Officers (including himself) to:

·  Sit on the Integrated Care Board and to represent the Council on said Board including the making of decisions that require financial expenditure on the part of the Council provided such expenditure is within budgets agreed by Full Council; and

·  Sit on the sub-committee of the Integrated Care Board established to make placed-based decisions as may be required to ensure that the Council is appropriately and fully represented in accordance with the constitutional documents of said sub-committee.

(4)  To agree the overall governance arrangements set out in Appendix 1 of the report.

Integrated Care Boards form part of the new Integrated Care System (‘ICS’) which, it is hoped, will further empower local commissioning bodies to commission goods and services that are most relevant to their areas of operation.

In accordance with Schedule 2 of the Act, the ICB must contain at least one local authority representative. The Act sets out that this representative will represent all local authorities within the ICB’s geographic area. These are however minimum requirements, and it has been suggested by the current CCG (who are responsible for implementing the new constitutional arrangements for the ICB) that each of the three local authorities would be permitted to nominate a representative to sit on the ICB. The three local authorities have provisionally agreed, subject to Cabinet approval, to nominate their Chief Executive’s to sit on the ICB.

Discussions regarding the Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) are still at a very early stage. A steering group comprising the Chair and Chief Executive of the ICS and the Leaders and Chief Executives of the three local authorities has met once to begin scoping the work of the ICP. It will therefore take some time before a formal meeting of the ICP takes place.

Schedule 2 of the Act allows for the Integrated Care Board (ICB) to create sub-committees and allows for those sub-committees to be made up of non-ICB members.

The purpose of the sub-committee is to set the local strategy and provide oversight to a further board that will be tasked with delivering the agreed strategy.

There is a statutory requirement for at least one representative from a local authority to sit on the ICB as such there are no realistic alternative options.

Officers could be asked to explore whether the sub-committee could sit as some form of joint committee or committee of the Council. This has been explored by Officers already and they are satisfied that, at least whilst the new ICS way of working is in its infancy, the proposal before Cabinet represents the most effective way of progressing.