Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the NHS Intensive Recovery Support Programme on the performance of Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust.

The NHS Intensive Recovery Programme is focused on bringing decisive action to address longstanding issues, structural constraints and financial imbalance, in a small number of trusts with significant challenges. The first wave of trusts in the programme will include:

• North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust;

• Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust;

• Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust;

• Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust; and

• East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust.

This programme marks a clear shift in approach, namely moving away from a one size fits all approach, with individual trust boards taking ownership of a clear plan to make their organisation sustainable going forward. Each organisation will be engaged with a tailored and time-limited improvement approach, designed jointly between local leadership and NHS England regional and national teams.

NHS England is currently working with Mid and South Essex to pinpoint the key constraints and barriers to sustainable change and improvement, and to develop a plan to improve performance. As part of the Intensive Recovery Programme, NHS England national and regional teams have met with the new Chief Executive of Mid and South Essex, to begin developing a recovery compact that focuses on stabilising performance in-year across quality, finance and operational performance, and to develop a turnaround plan that addresses longstanding issues.

The East of England NHS regional team continue to lead day-to-day oversight of provider and integrated care board delivery, with escalation to the Regional Executive Team and Regional Support Group where required. The region takes a holistic view of how well the organisation is delivering its statutory duties and agreed priorities, and this determines the level of scrutiny and how NHS England directs incentives, resources, support and interventions. Mid and South Essex is currently in Segment 4 of the NHS Oversight Framework, meaning the organisation is subject to the most intensive level of scrutiny until its delivery and/or capability improves and it can demonstrate that this improvement can be sustained.