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The information relates to staff and teams the ICB employs or has a direct responsibility for. Staff drawn from right across the partners in our ICB and ICS lead and contribute to its work and mission: To provide the best possible health outcomes for south east Londoners.

The 42 ICBs in England differ in their size and structure, ranging in population coverage from c. 500k to c. 3m. NHS South East London ICB is a larger ICB with a population of c. 2m people.

ICBs also differ in how their geographical boundaries relate to those of local government. Some ICB footprints relate to one authority and others relate to many. In south east London, the ICB relates to six local authorities as critical partners that in many respects drive the shape of our structures and teams.

Many of our team members are jointly employed with local authorities and work in support of our borough-based Local Care Partnerships, which bring health and care organisations together to plan and deliver local community-based services for their population.

ICBs also offer very different provider portfolios. South east London provides local services to the whole of our population and many services to ICBs that border us, as well as some of the most specialised services across the south of England and wider. Many of our staff are employed by the ICB but work with provider collaboratives and in support of service delivery and improvement across our system.

When they were established on 1 July 2022, ICBs were required to retain or ‘lift and shift’ the staffing structures (below executive director level) of their predecessor organisations – Clinical Commissioning Groups or CCGs. This introduces further difference given the different nature of those previous arrangements in England.

Before it was dissolved, NHS South East London CCG shared the same geographical footprint as the ICB has now. It was part of the South East London Integrated Care System (ICS) when it was established in 2020. As such, large parts of the ICB’s inherited structure were designed with the future in mind.

In March 2023, all ICBs were tasked to make cost savings of 30% to their running costs by 2025/26, with at least 20% to be delivered in 2024/25. South East London ICB undertook to make these savings in one year. This work required significant changes to staffing and structures, and our new structure is as shown in the current organisation chart / organogram.

The organogram provided here is accurate as of 7 October 2024. It will change, both for reasons of changing business needs over time, and as the ICB continues to evolve the structure of resources, capacity and capability.

NHS South East London ICB is directly responsible for a recurrent NHS budget of £3.9bn and the combined annual resource allocation of the NHS partnership that makes up the ICB is £7.2bn. Our responsibilities of our teams and their shape is summarised below.

For any questions related to this publication, please contact: SELGovernance@selondonics.nhs.uk.

Responsibilities

The South East London ICB was established by the Health and Social Care Act (2022) on 1 July 2022. The ICB replaced the previous South East London CCG, assuming its responsibilities and the staff previously employed by it, as well as functions and staff transferred from the London Shared Services organisation.

Like all ICBs nationally, our ICB is responsible for developing a plan in collaboration with NHS Trusts/ Foundation Trusts and other system partners for meeting the health needs of the population, managing the NHS budget, and arranging for the provision of health services in south east London.

The ICB works with its partners to improve outcomes in population health and healthcare; identify and tackle inequalities in outcomes, experience and access; to enhance productivity and value for money; and to help the NHS provide broader social and economic development in the south east London area.

In addition, the ICB fulfils a range of statutory duties, including responsibilities for safeguarding and protecting care quality.

ICB organisational structure

The organisation is structured in a way that allows us to meet our objectives and deliver on our responsibilities. As such, we are organised with:

  • A Unitary Board which brings together the ICB, NHS and local authority partners with Executive, Non-Executives and Partner Members.
  • An Executive Management Team comprising a Chief Executive plus six ICB director posts and six borough directors (referred to as Place Executive Leads).
  • Directorates that sit underneath each executive director organised in to teams to support delivery of the ICB’s functions. These include medical and nursing, finance, planning and operations directorates.
  • Place partnership directorates for each of Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich, Lambeth, Lewisham, and Southwark.

More than half of our staffing spend is deployed within our Boroughs working as part of Place teams, most often doing so as part of joint teams with Local Authority employees. The remaining spend is deployed with teams working across south east London in support of borough and pan ICB area objectives.

A summary of our Directorates (our teams) is provided below.

Key areas of ICB workforce deployment

The ICB undertakes a wide range of activities in support of a complex health and care system in south east London. Our organisational structure reflects this complexity and requires staff from across our directorates to work in collaboration. Some of our main areas of activity are summarised below:

  • Support to primary care providers, including contracting; general practice information technology; prescribing support; and primary care delivery and development support
  • Arranging services for our local population, including, planning to meet the needs of our population, national and local priorities, agreeing, monitoring, and managing contracts and performance with a wide range of service providers (ranging from targeted local voluntary and community organisations to large teaching hospitals)
  • Arranging person-centred care and individual placements such as continuing healthcare, complex mental health placements and personal budgets
  • Providing a system quality surveillance, monitoring and management; quality improvement activities; delivery of statutory responsibilities such as adults and children’s safeguarding
  • Convening our local health and care system through six local care partnerships who are responsible for organising primary care and community-based services and lead work on care pathway improvement
  • Determining how the funding that the ICB receives should be allocated to best meet the needs of the population, secure maximum value and best achieve financial sustainability
  • Delivery of corporate functions in support of the organisation and broader health and care system, such as HR, finance, emergency preparedness and planning

Our Directorate Teams

Our organogram, showing how our organisation and teams are structured, is here.

Executive management team

The executive team directs the overall operations and activities of the ICB. In this the executive supports the Board in setting strategy, provides direction to the organisation on key matters of business, dealing with issues, identifying and responding to emergent risks, and agreeing an approach to other matters requiring response.

The leadership team plays a role in devising strategy and ensuring that the ICB is delivering on its plans. The executive team ensures that directorates and their teams are delivering on their objectives, and that the organisation is working effectively with its partners in pursuit of its goals.

Finance directorate

The directorate leads ICB and ICS system financial planning, budgeting, and arrangements for financial delegation throughout the organisation. The directorate is responsible for supporting the prudent management of financial resources, financial governance and promoting and monitoring programmes of efficiencies and activities that enhance financial value. The directorate is responsible for ensuring that all statutory financial reporting (including the ICB annual accounts) are completed. The team is also responsible for ensuring compliance with statutory financial duties, managing financial risks across the ICB and for reporting to the Board and regulatory agencies.

As part of the Finance directorate, an estates function undertakes a strategic role in the planning and optimisation of SEL estate, supporting NHS capital expenditure programmes and responding on behalf of the ICB on major planning proposals.

Quality and nursing directorate

This directorate is responsible for monitoring the quality and safety of care delivered to patients in primary care, acute, mental health, and community care sectors. Colleagues work with system partners to identify and manage key quality and safety risks, support quality improvement and shared learning activities and the learning from incidents and near misses.

They provide expert input into the development of high-quality provision for defined patient groups including individuals with learning disabilities and autism and those requiring continuing care. The team includes specialists who work collaboratively with system partners to undertake ICB statutory functions for safeguarding, special educational needs and infection prevention and control.

Planning directorate

The directorate is responsible for a range of analytical, planning and contracting activities in support of the broader ICS system. Planning activities include the development and coordination of system-wide strategic, operational, and service-level plans, which incorporate the key elements of resources (financial and workforce), performance and activity.

The team works in support of the ICB Transformation Boards to support pathway and performance improvement, medicines optimisation, the implementation of plans to deliver agreed targets/ trajectories, and work on performance improvement activities. The directorate is responsible for negotiating, monitoring and managing a significant ICB contract portfolio covering acute, community and primary care and hosted services on behalf of London ICBs (e.g. NHS 111) and for system operational and pressures management.

Corporate directorate

The corporate directorate is responsible for the planning, management and delivery of key ICB statutory obligations including emergency planning and preparedness, risk management and information governance; health and safety; complaints and patient liaison; equalities, diversity and inclusion and sustainability.

The team supports the Board to design and maintain effective systems of governance, assurance and reporting and lead on the ICB’s interactions with the internal and external audit programme and other compliance and regulatory activities.

The directorate includes the HR, workforce and organisational development functions.

Borough Local Care Partnership (LCP) directorates

The six borough LCPs operate as directorates of the ICB with local delegated authority for local services and integration. They play a role in convening their local health and care system to support health, social care and voluntary and community sector collaboration and to foster the integration of services for the benefit of patients and local residents.

They are responsible for ensuring the effective planning, delivery, monitoring, management, and evaluation of delegated services, including primary care; primary care prescribing; community services – across physical and mental health; continuing healthcare; and multiple contracts for out of hospital services. They are additionally responsible for pathway and service improvement within their delegated scope.

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Communications and engagement directorate

The communications team provides strategic and operational communications and guidance to support the delivery of NHS SEL’s mission and objectives. They support and add value to the successful delivery of projects and programmes; ensure that stakeholders (staff, patients, communities and partners) are informed, involved and inspired; and promote the work and build the reputation of NHS SEL and SEL ICS.

The engagement team supports ICB teams in working with local people and communities to influence service redesign and development so that services work for local people and help address health inequalities.

Digital directorate

The Digital directorate is responsible for working with partners across our system to facilitate the digital enablement of health and care. The team is also responsible for the delivery of digital services for general practitioners, and for ICB staff.

The workstreams of the Digital directorate include:

  1. Empower people through digital and data
  2. Digital solutions for connected care
  3. Deliver data driven insights
  4. Ensure system resilience, data integrity and cyber security
  5. Drive continuous improvement and innovation
  6. Undertake workforce planning to support our digital, data and analytics activities.