Derby and Derbyshire’s pioneering neighbourhood health model

A report from GGi’s October webinar

GGi’s monthly webinar for October examined Derby and Derbyshire’s pioneering neighbourhood health model – a locally led approach to health and care that brings together NHS, local authority and community partners to improve population wellbeing.

The session was chaired by GGi partner Aidan Rave, with main speakers Professor Andrew Corbett-Nolan, GGi CEO, Dr Penny Blackwell, Clinical Director for Neighbourhood Health and Care Transformation, Derby and Derbyshire, Nicki Docherty Director of Place and Partnerships, Derby and Derbyshire ICB, and Jim Austin, Chief Executive, Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Trust.

From place alliances to neighbourhoods

Andrew opened by outlining GGi’s two-year collaboration with Derby and Derbyshire, which began with governance development across 17 primary care networks and evolved into a system-wide focus on eight place-based alliances. These alliances, he explained, are no longer ‘coalitions of the willing’ but entities capable of holding budgets, data and accountability – the governance foundation for a neighbourhood model capable of supporting NHS reform.

Penny Blackwell traced the origins of this approach to 2019, when local alliances were created as delivery geographies aligned to local authority areas. The Team Up programme grew from this base, establishing integrated multidisciplinary teams to respond to urgent community needs. She described how the work had changed the culture, allowing professionals to team around the person rather than the institution and to address wider social, emotional and housing factors alongside clinical care.

Scaling up through governance

Nicki Docherty explained how Derbyshire is now embedding this learning through three tiers of scale: neighbourhoods (30–50k population), place alliances, and a system-wide enabling layer that will hold pooled budgets and provide shared infrastructure such as HR, estates and legal support. “We’re not doing a top-down reorganisation,” she said. “This is bottom-up – communities shaping what they need.”

Jim Austin reflected on the organisational mindset shift required: “You have to let go while remaining accountable.” He credited GGi with providing governance frameworks that enable distributed leadership without losing transparency or assurance.

A lively discussion followed. Audience members asked how the model addresses the interface between health and social care, with examples of integrated Section 75 arrangements and workforce transfers offered in response.

Others explored population size flexibility, governance of pooled budgets, and how neighbourhoods will prioritise different local needs, such as loneliness in rural areas versus chronic illness in ex-industrial communities.

Meanwhile, in the chat, points and questions were raised about:

• the potential impact of AI triage tools on Team Up’s person-centred approach
• how to sustain VCSE engagement amid unstable funding
• opportunities for CICs and social enterprises to act as agile partners
• redefining professional practice as the “breadth of licence” rather than “top of licence,” valuing all staff contributions equally

There was strong support for ensuring the model genuinely meets communities where they are – in local venues, faith spaces, and social settings – and for protecting organisations like Healthwatch, which several attendees said are vital for authentic citizen voice.

Looking ahead

Andrew Corbett-Nolan closed by introducing GGi’s Neighbourhood Maturity Matrix, a tool to assess governance and leadership development at local level, and confirmed that a full paper on the Derbyshire model will be published once system partners review it.