Neighbourhood Health Academy Live Session:
The Big Debate: What Does The New Neighbourhood Contracting Model Mean & What You Should Do?
An interactive online debate. Wednesday 19th August, 1pm to 2pm. Free to attend.
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Intro
If you work in neighbourhood health, decisions are about to be made that will shape your world for years. The window to influence them is open now, and it closes on 10 September.
NHS England has published its consultation on the proposed Single Neighbourhood Provider (SNP) and Multi-Neighbourhood Provider (MNP) contracts. These proposals could decide who holds neighbourhood health contracts, who controls resources, who carries risk, and how local organisations work together. They are expected to start shaping local arrangements from next year. These may look like technical contracting proposals. In reality, they could produce one of the biggest reorganisations of frontline care in many years.
Why this session, and why now?
These proposals are worth understanding, not just for what they say, but for how differently they could be interpreted and implemented locally. Will they create a fundamentally different model of neighbourhood care? Or will they extend the structures we already have, with new names and another layer of contracting?
Read the same proposal from different seats and you see different things. What a commissioner reads as clearer accountability, a GP may read as organisational capture. What a trust sees as a chance to integrate care, a VCFSE organisation may see as the moment it becomes a sub-subcontractor. Nobody is necessarily wrong. The proposals land differently depending on where you sit, and that is exactly why we need to thrash them out together.
What is the proposed neighbourhood health contract model?
NHS England has set out two new contracting models, open for consultation until 10 September.
A Single Neighbourhood Provider (SNP) serves a single neighbourhood, typically around 50,000 people. It is an evolution of PCNs, proposed as an alternative to the PCN DES locally.
A Multi-Neighbourhood Provider (MNP) covers 250,000 or more. The contract could be held by a GP led organisation, CIC, NHS trust or another legal entity. It comes in two forms: a coordination model, where services stay in their existing contracts and the MNP manages incentives and fills gaps, or a lead provider model, which brings services and funding into one population-based contract, sub-contracts the SNPs, and takes responsibility for neighbourhood outcomes.
The MNP does not yet exist. Whoever holds the contract would have to build significant new capacity to deliver it. In most places this is likely to mean a major reorganisation of community services and primary care, potentially spanning integrated neighbourhood teams, urgent general practice outside core hours, long-term condition pathways, medicines optimisation, practice support, analytics and back office functions. Local authority services could be included by agreement.
There is real flexibility here: services designed around local populations, multi-year contracts, and a protected minimum of PCN DES investment. But there is no new national funding. Which raises the question the whole model turns on: what gets defunded locally to create the capacity? These services cannot build capacity out of thin air.
This is an early consultation, not a final model. But it sets the financial and operating architecture around neighbourhood health, and that architecture will likely dictate its future.
Read the consultation here:Here: A consultation on proposed Multi-Neighbourhood Provider (MNP) and Single Neighbourhood Provider (SNP) contracting models to support neighbourhood health services
What happens on the day?
This is a discussion and a debate. We are bringing together voices from across neighbourhood health, primary care, hospital trusts, commissioning, and the charity and VCFSE sector, to set out how they read these proposals, what they think the contracts mean from where they sit, and what they think should happen next.
Once each perspective has been put, the floor is open. Bring your questions, challenge the views on offer, and add your own reading from your own seat. Understanding the different perspecitves will help us understand how the contract models will be interpreted and acted upon by different people and organisations. This is where the real understanding comes from, and where the questions worth putting to the consultation actually surface.
What is shared in the session will feed a formal response from the Neighbourhood Health Academy to the consultation, so this is a real chance to influence what happens next, not just to talk.
Expect to get into the questions that matter. Who should take the lead? Will the contracts enable genuine collaboration, or create another organisational hierarchy? Who will hold the power, and who will carry the risk? Could a large provider dominate while passing responsibility downwards? Where do local authorities, social care, communities and the VCFSE sector fit? How do we prevent organisations focusing only on what is contractually required, quickly measured and financially rewarded? Where does patient-centred, community-rooted work sit within the model? And underneath all of these: how do we use these contracts to make neighbourhood health a success?
The work to understand these proposals, challenge them and prepare for them needs to begin now, not in the autumn when the decisions are closer to made. Whatever seat you occupy, come and make the case from where you sit. So we can work out how to act and get ahead with a deeper understanding of what is coming.
The Details:
Wednesday 19th July, 1pm to 2pm, online via Zoom. Register below and we will send your joining link straight to your inbox.
Put your name down and we will send the Zoom link to your inbox.
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Who it is for?
Anyone starting or involved with neighbourhood health work:
NHS leaders, VCSE organisations, local authority colleagues, GPs and practice teams, community health workers, commissioners and innovators who are figuring it out as they go.
You do not need to have the answers. You just need to be working on the questions.
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Frequently Asked Questions
No fees, no commitment. Let’s learn how we can work together.
What do you mean by Neighbourhood Health?
Neighbourhood health refers to organising health and care around smaller, local populations, with a strong emphasis on relationships, prevention, and coordination across services.
It brings together clinical care, community-based support, and local knowledge to respond to people’s needs earlier and more holistically. With a particular emphasis on managing those with complex, long-term, or multiple needs as well as reducing health inequalities in local populations.
Neighbourhood health is not a single model. It looks different in different places and must be shaped by local context.
How is Neighbourhood Health different from traditional NHS care?
Traditional NHS care is largely organised around acute (hospital) clinical pathways and clinical services. With patients diagnosed treated, escalated and exchanged between healthcare providers based on clinical assessments. It is predominantly a transactional model of healthcare with single lines of accountability aimed at processing patients efficiently.
Neighbourhood health instead focuses on place, relationships, and coordination across boundaries, connecting clinical pathways with community support, prevention, and ongoing care. It aims to respond earlier, reduce fragmentation, and support people over time rather than episodically.
Both are necessary. Neighbourhood health is an enhancement of clinical care, it does not replace it.
Why is Neighbourhood Health so important right now?
Demand, complexity, and inequality are rising faster than the NHS system can respond, through clinical care alone, resulting in waiting lists and delayed provision of healthcare.
There is recognition that we cannot treat our way out of current challenges. Without stronger local approaches that connect healthcare with community needs, the system risks remaining reactive, expensive, and overstretched.
Neighbourhood health is still forming. Decisions made now about models, governance, measurement and how services are provided and to whom, will shape the NHS and our society for years to come.
Are You Advocating For Natural Or Alternative Remedies Over Traditional Healthcare?
Absolutely not, we follow the advice of qualified medical experts first and foremost.
We do not endorse ever going against clinical advice. If there is a medical question we very strongly recommend speaking to a fully qualified clinician for expert advice and following it.
If in doubt call NHS 111 or see your GP.
What is this community?
This is an online, practitioner led learning community for people working on neighbourhood health.
It provides a space to share challenges, compare approaches, discuss evidence, and reflect on real world implementation, particularly where work spans clinical and community settings.
It is designed to support learning and capability building, not to prescribe solutions.
Are You Affiliated With The NHS
We are not an NHS body or a registered medical provider. We work independently of the NHS. If you are an NHS organisation contact and we will be happy to discuss if and how we can work together.
What does the community actually do?
The community supports:
- Relection on real world practical challenges of delivering neighbourhood health.
Shared learning from real neighbourhood work
Discussion of implementation challenges (governance, workforce, evaluation, collaboration, technology)
Practitioner led working groups on specific topics
Reflection on evidence, measurement, and improvement approaches
Honest discussion of uncertainty and trade-offs
Who is it not for?
This community is not intended for:
Sales, marketing, or lead generation
Generic wellbeing or lifestyle content
Political ideological positions
Spaces focused on performance management or inspection
Is the community free to join?
Yes. There is currently no cost to join.
Why do I need to complete a quiz to join?
The short quiz helps us:
- Helps to design the community around members needs
Understand who is joining and their context
Keep the community relevant and psychologically safe
Avoid sales activity and misalignment
It takes around five minutes and helps protect the quality of the space for everyone.
How do I join?
You can apply by completing the short quiz linked on this page. Applications are reviewed regularly, and we respond personally.