Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what criteria NHS England uses to determine whether a clinical commissioning group mental health transformation plan is acceptable; and who is accountable for ensuring the delivery of such transformation plans.

Local Transformation Plans were proposed in Future in Mind (March 2015). The aim of these plans is to bring together local commissioners from the National Health Service, local authorities and schools, and have them clearly set out how they will make progress on child and adolescent mental health. NHS England and the Department are working with partners jointly to produce national guidance to support the development of local transformation plans. The expectation is that NHS England will publish the guidance in early July. Clinical networks have been working locally to support joint planning. NHS England and partners will be developing further resources and support over the summer which will be available both to clinical commissioning groups and partner organisations to build on their initial plans in the medium and long term to achieve the ambition set out in Future in Mind.

In the interim, NHS England has written to all clinical commissioning groups encouraging them to work with their partners from across the NHS, public health, local authority, youth justice and education sector. This letter states that a bespoke assurance process will be developed for 2015-16, with integration within the mainstream NHS planning guidance process from 2016-17 onwards.