ICS gets fourth leadership team in five years

A message to integrated care system staff on Thursday said Sheena Cumiskey, Cheshire and Wirral Partnership Foundation Trust chief executive, will fill the role on an interim basis.

It said she will return to her substantive trust role after three months and “will not be applying for the permanent position”.

In May, the ICS chair Alan Yates and chief officer Jackie Bene announced they were quitting because the roles had become “something they didn’t sign up for”. They had also faced difficulties in managing local relationships.

As revealed earlier this week, a subsequent recruitment process for a new permanent chair failed to appoint anyone, which has resulted in David Flory being brought in as interim chair. He also chairs the Lancashire and South Cumbria ICS.

Mr Flory and Ms Cumiskey will be the system’s fourth leadership team since 2016. There have long been arguments around whether the ICS should be split into smaller geographies, a point which Cheshire’s Conservative MPs have recently pushed.

In a statement about a small number of ICS boundary changes on Thursday, health minister Edward Argar said: “Local areas may still wish to keep under review how their boundaries are working in the light of any new legislative framework….

“We have already heard such requests from local stakeholders around Cheshire and Merseyside ICS; as such the secretary of state has also announced his intention to review this system.”

Mr Argar said this review would take place in “two years”, following the implementation of the new NHS bill and ICSs becoming legal entities. It came as the government confirmed boundaries for several other ICSs which had been up for debate because they do not match top-tier local authority boundaries.