GP primary care networks given two weeks to submit neighbourhood health centre plans 

GP networks in one area have been given just 14 days to tell their ICB their proposed role within neighbourhood health centres. 

Essex ICB wrote to GPs on 27 April asking them to submit proposals for their involvement in neighbourhood health centres by Monday, 11 May. 

Last month, NHS England has gave ICBs until 15 May to submit their strategic commissioning plans including neighbourhood care plans.

In the email, the ICB leaders said they ‘apologise for the short notice, but this unfortunately is out of our hands’.

Separately, it has given regions working with ICBs a 28 May deadline to give a ‘clear articulation’ of the potential neighbourhood health estate in their areas.

The Government plans for 250 neighbourhood health centres to be created in England, which NHS England recently advised should be ‘anchored around general practice’.

In his email, Essex ICB chief executive Tom Abell apologised for the ‘short notice’, which he said was ‘out of our hands’. 

He said: ‘As you may have seen, on the 15 April, the Government issued guidance on the development of Neighbourhood Health Centres (NHCs), which is available online. This asks ICBs to submit their proposed pipeline of NHCs by 28 May 2026, giving us 44 days, a clearly tight deadline.

‘Despite this, we wanted to give PCNs the opportunity to submit their ideas and thoughts as part of our process to develop the pipeline for Essex and this email sets out the approach we will take and how you can get involved in contributing your thoughts on what can be delivered. We value your thoughts and want any proposals to align with your ambitions and existing plans.’

He said the ICB had already identified five proposed sites for the largest 100,000+ patient centres, but asked PCNs to identify ideas or schemes of their own based on the needs of their population for the smaller ‘core’ (30,000 patients) and ‘core+’-sized (50,000 patients) centres.

‘We would encourage you to think about the opportunities of the redevelopment of existing NHS and public sector estate as part of these plans and also what would be required for your PCN to be able to deliver the core service requirements as set out within the guidance,’ he said.

Essex LMC chief executive Dr Brian Balmer told Pulse: ‘It is an extraordinarily tight schedule. Only organisations with significant management infrastructure will have the capacity to respond [in so short a time].  

‘The ICB is trying its best to get something together despite what NHS England is doing. The feeling here is, for neighbourhoods nationally, NHS England wants to hand everything over to trusts, and I believe the ICBs are going to try to oppose that, because it is no secret NHS England is heavily influenced by acute services.

‘The general feeling is – all this talk about community this and community that – actually they [NHS England] want to deal with trusts, so it’s going to be an uphill battle.’

While some other LMCs told Pulse they were broadly aware of discussions on neighbourhood health centres by ICB estates strategy groups, GP practices in their areas had not been asked to contribute or given a deadline to do so.

GP leaders have warned the Government could be excluding GPs and primary care from leading on neighbourhoods through premises schemes.

GP practices and local authorities were not included in a recent scheme to transfer NHS Property Services-owned premises to hospital trusts. The BMA said the transfer scheme suggested the Government had a preference for secondary care to lead neighbourhoods. 

And last year, South East London ICB appointed hospital trusts, rather than GPs, to lead neighbourhood programmes in each of the six boroughs in the ICB area. 

Essex ICB told Pulse: ‘On 15 April 2026, the Government asked ICBs to submit proposed neighbourhood health centre pipelines by 28 May.

‘Within a week, NHS Essex wrote to Primary Care Networks and councils to offer discussions and set an initial deadline of 11 May to gather and review ideas in the round ahead of final submission. While the national timeframe is tight, we are committed to working with partners to shape proposals for Core and Core+ centres.’

The ICB clarified the letter was sent on 27 April.

Pulse has contacted NHS England for comment.