NHS Greater Manchester has made significant strides since July 2024, working more closely with NHS England to deliver a set of formalised agreed actions under one Single Improvement Plan (often referred to as SIP) to enhance care for people across our region.
This process is referred to legally as ‘Enforcement Undertakings’. The plan hinges on four key pillars:
- Leadership and governance
- Financial sustainability
- Performance and assurance
- Quality of care
Progress update NHS England undertakings
In March this year, we reported that we had achieved compliance with 28 of the 36 undertakings, and we were making progress against the remaining eight.
We can now report we have achieved compliance in four more undertakings. They are:
- Leadership and governance: following the independent Carnall Farrar review, NHS GM implemented system-wide improvements that NHS England has now formally signed off as compliant. This was a particularly broad ranging and comprehensive undertaking that addressed all parts of our system and the achievement of this undertaking is particularly noteworthy
- Financial planning: NHS England has accepted GM Integrated Care Partnership’s financial plan submission for 2025/26, which has achieved £335m of savings reducing the overspend to £200m – a much-improved position thanks to everybody’s efforts
- Quality: providers such as hospital trusts across GM are meeting requirements set out in NHS GM’s Quality Improvement Plan, and NHS GM is demonstrating good quality governance assurance and oversight mechanisms
What happens next?
We are pleased with progress to date, and we now focus on the remaining four undertakings:
- Delivering the 2025/26 NHS Greater Manchester financial plan
- Developing the medium-term financial plan with the aim of ensuring NHS GM enters 2026/27 in a “break-even” position
- Continuing to resolve outstanding historical commissioning arrangements
- Sustaining improvements in patient wait times (4 hours, 12 hours, and 14 days)
A further review will be carried out regarding progress against the remaining undertakings in September 2025. The NHS GM improvement plan expects improvements will have been completed at this point. This will represent significant progress by all system partners in conjunction with NHS England.
