New CCGs reveal leaders and budgets following split

Cumbria CCG split on 1 April, with the 32 south Cumbria GP practices covering South Lakes and Furness switching their membership to Lancashire North to form the new Morecambe Bay CCG.

Forty-one practices will form North Cumbria CCG covering Allerdale, Carlisle, Copeland and Eden.

The CCGs will split the original group’s £700m allocation, with 39 per cent going to Morecambe Bay and 61 per cent to North Cumbria.

Former Greater Manchester Police chief superintendent Jon Rush has been appointed te chair of North Cumbria CCG after Hugh Reeve, who was based in the south of the county, stood down.

Stephen Childs will remain chief executive of North Cumbria, which will have an allocation of about £448m for 2017-18.

Morecambe Bay CCG will be run by Lancashire North’s current chief officer Andrew Bennett, with 17 office staff and six clinical staff transferring from the old organisation.

The boundary changes, which were approved by NHS England last month, were proposed last year, and build on regional transformation plans in both areas.

The changes will also mean services in south Cumbria currently managed by NHS England’s North East and Cumbria team will switch to the jurisdiction of the Lancashire team, which will be renamed NHS England Lancashire and South Cumbria.

Both areas of Cumbria are also in separate sustainability and transformation plan footprints – the north is in West, North and East Cumbria STP, and the south is in Lancashire and South Cumbria STP.

Health leaders in Morecambe Bay are looking to establish an accountable care system in shadow form by April as part of the vanguard programme.

The west, north and east Cumbria success regime has been working to turn around the troubled health economy, which reported a £70m overspend in 2015-16 that is predicted to rise to £163m by 2020.

Cumbria CCG agreed a number of acute and community service reconfigurations last month, but the county council’s health scrutiny committee referred some of them to health secretary Jeremy Hunt.

Mr Hunt will make the decision on whether to uphold the CCG’s decision or overturn it.