The North Central London Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee met on Friday 18 September 2026 to consider the West and North London Corporate Strategy and Involvement Framework, and to discuss the committee's work programme for the upcoming year. The meeting also included an update on the West and North London Integrated Care Board's (ICB) strategy.

West and North London Corporate Strategy and Involvement Framework

A significant portion of the meeting was dedicated to the West and North London Corporate Strategy and Involvement Framework. This framework outlines the ICB's ten-year plan to improve health outcomes for the approximately 4.5 million people living across its 13 boroughs. The strategy is built on three core goals: improving outcomes, easing pressure on services, and making the best use of resources.

The report pack highlighted that outcomes and inequalities are not improving, with a notable gap in healthy life expectancy between different neighbourhoods. It also noted that more resources are being absorbed by hospital and crisis care, with a projected deficit of over £1 billion by 2035/36 if current trends continue. The strategy aims to address these issues by shifting focus towards prevention, proactive care, and neighbourhood-based delivery.

Key priorities for the ICB's first year include delivering operational commitments and financial plans, setting up the new organisation for success, investing in high-impact population health interventions, and developing a clinically-led strategy. The strategy development approach involves understanding people's needs through data and resident feedback, looking ahead to future demands, checking resource usage, finding opportunities for improvement, and agreeing on actions and priorities.

The report identified six population groups as strategic priorities:

• Healthier beginnings: Focusing on pregnancy, babies, children, and young people, with specific attention to early years and family support, and young people's mental health and employment.
• Healthier lives: Addressing working-age adults, including those with serious mental illness (SMI) and those at risk of, or living with, early-stage long-term conditions (LTCs).
• Healthier ageing: Supporting older adults and end-of-life care, with a focus on adults with complexity and ensuring a dignified death for all.

The strategy also proposes care-model shifts, including neighbourhood health services and planned care transformation, supported by key foundations such as trust and engagement, new technology, and commissioning and workforce development.

The report pack also detailed the development of a new public involvement framework for 2027-30. This framework aims to set out how the ICB will listen to people, make involvement more inclusive, support the ICB's ten-year strategy and 'left shift'¹, and ensure public insight influences commissioning decisions. Engagement activities have included a Let's Talk campaign, community events, surveys, and in-depth conversations with community leaders. Emerging themes from this engagement include the importance of early involvement, co-production, lived experience as expertise, closing the feedback loop, inclusion, accessibility, community partnerships, multiple ways to participate, and recognition and support for participation.

Work Programme 2026-27

The committee was presented with an outline of items for consideration as part of its 2026/27 work programme. This included scheduled updates on the West and North London ICB's strategy, integrators, and the Work Well Strategy for the meeting on 18 September 2026. Future meetings were scheduled to include updates on winter planning, the London Ambulance Service, ICB finance, and estates and infrastructure strategy. Other potential items for future discussion included the NCL Health Inequalities Fund, hospital mergers, and updates on specific hospital programmes.