NEL Anchor Charter

NEL ICS Anchor Charter: Collaborative action to reduce health inequalities and support economic recovery.

Building on the wealth of good practice at the local organisational level and aligning with local recovery strategies, we will be working with all our local authority partners and Trust colleagues in NEL to collaborate as an ‘anchor system’ to use our assets for social, economic and environmental benefit. Operating as an anchor system, we will be sharing local learning to accelerate progress more widely and grasping opportunities to collaborate where helpful. We will identify joint priorities for action to address inequalities and the wider determinants of health in NEL, in equal partnership with our local communities.

The anchor systems (all NEL NHS Trust and Local Authority chief executives) have signed up to a NEL Anchor Charter which has a set of principles and four key priority areas that support using these assets to better support our local communities.

 Four key priority areas:

1. Widening access to employment, training and a proving the best working experience – for example, NEL ICS has secured £250,000 to establish a Health Careers and Employment Hub for NEL people, including plans for 750 individuals from underrepresented groups in NEL to be supported into work. Trusts, Local Authority, HEI and HEE representatives regularly meet at NEL People Board and are developing the NEL People Strategy to set out how we will work collectively to address some of our biggest workforce challenges across health and social care.
2. Procurement for social value – for example, exploring how social value metrics align to the public health needs of local population, and including social value in procurement at King Georges Hospital and Whipps Cross redevelopment.
3. Maximising the value of our buildings and land – for example, the integrated health and wellbeing hub at Barking Riverside.
4. Supporting a greener and healthier future – NEL ICS will create a Green Plan with the system which will set out how we will lay the foundations over the next three years in order to meet the ambitious target to reduce our carbon footprint by 80% by 2028.  

 In the first year of this Plan we will:

• Launch and promote the NEL ICS Green Plan and develop place based delivery plans 
• The NEL ICS Net Zero Programme Team and Net Zero Clinical leaders will oversee delivery of the Plan 
• To invest in transformation by opening up an Investment Fund to all system partners
• Inform all staff and ICS leaders so that they can commit to championing the green agenda.