A pioneering fruit and veg prescription in Tower Hamlets has delivered powerful results, improving physical health for 8 in 10 participants and cutting self-reported GP visits by 15%.
Now, Alexandra Rose Charity is encouraging local authorities and healthcare leaders to take note of the scheme’s success and consider adopting similar models to support healthier, more resilient communities.
Alexandra Rose Charity is working in partnership with Tower Hamlets Council and the Bromley By Bow Centre to provide families on low incomes with access to fresh fruit and vegetables. The charity has been supporting communities to eat better since its 2014 ‘Rose Vouchers for Fruit & Veg’ project and, more recently, its two ‘Fruit & Veg on Prescription’ projects.
Based in London, one project operates in Lambeth, to the South, and another operates in Tower Hamlets, in the East End. The Tower Hamlets project is now set to enter its third year of funding from Tower Hamlets Council.
Alexandra Rose Charity, in partnership with the Bromley by Bow Centre, delivers the Fruit & Veg on Prescription scheme in Tower Hamlets as part of a broader social prescribing service. Health professionals and Social Prescribing Link Workers issue weekly Rose Vouchers to people on low incomes with diet-related health conditions. These vouchers are collected from the Bromley by Bow Centre and used to purchase fresh, healthy food at local markets.
Between October 2022 and July 2024, 140 people have been prescribed Rose Vouchers. The results of recent data analysis shows that access to weekly fruit and vegetables has improved the physical health of 8 out of 10 of these participants.
In addition, 54% of participants experienced improved mental health, attributed to their need to worry less about money for food – and feel more supported in their community.
Aggie, a participant from Tower Hamlets, said: “When I got the Rose Vouchers for fruit and veg, I thought, ‘Brilliant, I don’t have to worry about food – at least I can still eat’. It was lifesaving for me.
“The food choices I’m making now are forever. Before I started receiving Rose Vouchers, I was feeling awful – I’d found out I had Type 2 Diabetes and high cholesterol. It’s been a complete lifestyle change; I could never go back.”
Self-reported GP visits have reduced by 15%, with patients experiencing a better diet, thanks to greater access to fruit and vegetables. 78% of participants met their ‘5 a day’ target after nine months of ‘Fruit & Veg on Prescription’, compared to 32% at the start of the project.
Dr Jennifer Walmsley, practising GP at Kingthorne Group Practice said: “I’m a huge advocate for the work that Alexandra Rose Charity is doing. Diet is key and Rose Vouchers make eating healthier food much more accessible.
“As GPs, we spend a significant amount of time dealing with the effects of poor diet and nutrition – I’d say more than anything else, in fact – because the majority of chronic diseases stem from those issues.
“Any steps we can take to improve diets and reverse those consequences are hugely beneficial. Not only does it enhance individual health and wellbeing, but it also helps ease pressure on the NHS, allowing GPs to focus on areas of care that aren’t preventable.”
The ongoing project, delivered by Alexandra Rose Charity, in partnership with Bromley by Bow Centre and funded by Tower Hamlets Council, is part of a social prescribing service that provides bespoke support to people with health and wellbeing challenges by connecting them with a Social Prescribing Link Worker.
The National Academy for Social Prescribing defines social prescribing as ‘connecting people to activities, groups and support that improve health and wellbeing’.
Eleanor Curry, a Social Prescribing Link Worker at Bromley by Bow Centre, said: “Social prescribing can help in many ways – I find the work we do with Alexandra Rose Charity, who provide us with Rose Vouchers, deeply impactful. The difference we have seen with clients who have used these vouchers is quite special really. As well as their diet improving, their health is better, their mood is lifted and they’re connecting to people at the centre.”
Voucher scheme participant Aggie added: “A lot of the positive changes that have happened have come off the back of me having access to fruit and veg and the support I received from the centre.”
“Before I had the support of my Social Prescribing Link Worker, I was struggling to leave the house. But now, I’m part of a business enterprise group and I’ve set up a business selling banana bread in the community.”
In Tower Hamlets, only 27% of adults eat the government-recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables a day.
Alexandra Rose Charity also found that 80% of participants said they were skipping meals to make food last longer at the start of the project. Nine months on, this number has reduced to 30% and has had a big impact on physical health too.
Access to a healthy diet is a key determinant of health. Before joining the project, 80% of participants were suffering from at least four symptoms of poor nutrition, such as fatigue, trouble focusing on tasks, sleep issues, fainting spells, and gut and digestion problems.
“When someone’s struggling with low mood, one of the first things I like to address is their lifestyle and diet,” adds Social Prescribing Link Worker Eleanor. “I’ll ask how they eat every day, what they have for breakfast, lunch and dinner and identify some of their unhealthy habits. I encourage a lot of my patients to have more fruit and veg because nutrition plays a huge role in mood and mental health.”
87% of participants now report a range of health improvements. 60% of participants also reported an improvement in their energy levels whilst 59% reported better digestion.
More than 3,500 Social Prescribing Link Workers have been employed within primary care teams and GP practices across England, processing over 2.7 million referrals to date. The personalised approach taken by Link Workers ensures that each person’s unique needs are met, enhancing the role of community resources in supporting patient health.
Cllr Sabina Akhtar, Lead Member for Health, Adults and Social care at Tower Hamlets Council, said: “It’s been truly heartening to hear local people share how much this programme has made a real difference to their everyday lives. By partnering with Alexandra Rose Charity and the Bromley by Bow Centre, we’ve been able to keep building on a project that’s shaped by the community itself—tackling food and nutrition challenges whilst also giving local shops and businesses a well-deserved boost.”
Alexandra Rose Charity CEO Jonathan added: “Aggie’s story is one of many that shows how a small change, such as access to fruit and veg, can transform lives – improving health, reducing isolation, and building community.
Alexandra Rose Charity hopes to raise awareness of the scheme’s impact and is calling on other local authorities and healthcare partners to adopt similar approaches to improve health and reduce pressure on services.
Embarking on healthcare technology career after leaving his home as a refugee during his teenage years, Yousif is passionate about making a difference. He reflects on an apprenticeship in which he has worked alongside technology innovators and the hospital teams that put solutions into practice for patient care.
When Yousif saw an opportunity advertised to learn skills that would help him begin a technology career, his attention was caught.
Yousif
Yousif, who had studied computer installation and maintenance in high school, became a refugee when he was aged 17. It meant he had to leave his home in Iraq, and he could no longer continue his education. Yousif arrived in Belfast in 2022.
“I was looking to get into education again, and found this opportunity,” he says. “Already, I can say this has been the best position of my life.”
He refers to an employability programme launched by The King’s Trust, formerly The Prince’s Trust, and medical imaging and cybersecurity company Sectra in 2024.
Gaining significant interest, the programme in Northern Ireland aimed to equip young people from under-represented backgrounds with practical skills and insights to help them apply for positions, as well as providing a taste of what it is like to work in the healthcare technology sector.
As part of the programme Yousif was successful in being offered an apprenticeship with Sectra.
“Healthcare was completely new to me,” he explains. “But this is already way better than I could have imagined. It’s technology that makes a difference, that helps clinical teams as they save lives.”
Supporting technology that matters to people’s lives
Headquartered in Sweden, Sectra provides imaging and diagnostic solutions to hospitals around the world – allowing radiology, pathology and other diagnostic teams to access, review and report on patient scans and slides. This might mean an examination involving an x-ray, CT, PET, ultrasound or MRI scan, or digital images of patient tissue, which can inform vital patient diagnoses and allow healthcare professionals to monitor progression.
A substantial number of healthcare providers throughout the UK use Sectra’s technology, known as an enterprise imaging solution, including diagnostic teams throughout Health and Social Care Northern Ireland, in one of the largest initiatives of its kind called NIPACS+.
These are the customers Yousif has been supporting since just the first few weeks of his apprenticeship.
“We have the best customers: they are super nice, and they help me to learn,” he says. “Each time I’m on the phone with the customer we have a conversation that helps build a relationship, as well as responding to their needs.”
Yousif’s role has been to support customers as a first line engineer – where he has been trained to create environments to link hospital worklists to the Sectra software, so that diagnostic images can be appropriately stored. He is also a first point of contact for hospital teams requiring advice or encountering issues – where he helps to arrange appropriate engineer responses to ensure timely action and prevent disruption to hospital workflows.
Learning has been a mixture of formal training, mentoring, and doing. “I wouldn’t have felt so comfortable on calls and dealing with customers without the amazing training and hands-on experience I’ve had,” he says.
He adds: “The highlight for me at the beginning – a visit to a hospital.” This helped him to understand more deeply how customers use the technology that he helps to support.
‘So invested in my personal growth’
Yousif’s experience has helped him to develop significantly, even from a relatively early stage in the programme. “I’ve developed my skills so much – my technical skills, communication skills, and problem-solving skills,” he says. “I’m a much better team player.”
It’s the team, and the organisational culture, to which he attributes that development. “It’s incredible: You get to learn every day at Sectra,” he says. “You are surrounded by very knowledgeable people who are happy to lead you, support you and help you grow.”
“I’ve made friends for life,” he adds. “They are the nicest people to talk to. Everyone works with everyone. I’m surrounded by people who are really motivated, passionate and driven. People who want to make a difference. I wake up every day wanting to be part of this team.”
Yousif has also been able to expand his knowledge beyond the scope of the apprenticeship. “Sectra has been so invested in my personal growth,” he explains. “I explained my interest in AI. Although this isn’t part of my current job, the company offered to pay for me to do a coding course. It shows how much the company cares about my personal growth, and they want me to learn.”
A future in healthcare technology
Yousif has already been made to feel he can make a difference in his role. He gives an example of how he was encouraged by Sectra colleagues to share his ideas when he first started the apprenticeship. “Those ideas triggered a big conversation,” he says. “It was amazing realising I’m not just there to learn, but to participate.”
This experience has given Yousif a clear direction on where he wants his career to grow. “I am 100 per cent excited for a career in healthcare technology,” he concludes. “I want to do something that makes a difference, and this is something I love.”
The 10 Year Health Plan sees a big role for AI, but as things stand suppliers, trusts and clinicians are struggling to deploy, scale, and get the most out of the tools available.
Harry Lykostratis
Harry Lykostratis, chief executive of Open Medical, explains how its Keypoint project will address the challenges and create a framework for the adoption of agentic AI that can support more efficient and effective workflows.
The government’s 10 Year Health Plan makes a lot of the potential of AI-software to support clinical decision making, improve productivity, and guide patients around the NHS.
That optimism may be well founded: AI models are being developed and improved rapidly. However, what we are seeing right now is that health is struggling with applicability.
We have seen some success with ambient voice technology, but in many ways that is an evolution of existing ways of working. Scribes may capture more detail during a consultation and generate documents with less manual labour on the part of clinicians, but they are not going to unleash the revolution we have seen in other industries.
Scalability, applicability
So, what is holding health back when it comes to other applications of AI? From the conversations I have had with chief clinical information officers, it seems there is a lot of interest, but it is proving hard to experiment with these technologies.
Healthcare is reluctant to feed models large amounts of personal data, so they get trained on very sterile data that may come from just a few hundred cases. Integration with NHS systems is hard and expensive, so for most suppliers it is just not worth the effort to work at that level.
Also, models trained on just a few hundred cases are hard to scale, which makes it difficult to incorporate them into organisational workflows. We need to resolve these issues and start thinking about the near future, because over the next few years we are going to see a move from individual AIs to agentic AIs.
Today, we ask an AI a question, and it gives us an answer. Then we ask the AI another question, or we use another AI, to refine that output. In future, we’ll use an agent that can handle multiple outputs to achieve a specified end with much less – or no – intervention from us.
In some industries, it will be acceptable for these agentic AIs to operate as black boxes. We won’t really know how they achieve their goals, and they may evolve in ways that are hard to predict. I don’t think that will be acceptable in healthcare. Each step taken by an agentic AI will need to be transparent and we’ll want to be able to interrogate them to ensure patient safety.
Codename Keychain
Open Medical is addressing these challenges through a project that we have codenamed Keychain. Our cloud-based, pathway management platform, Pathpoint, already has many of the features required.
We are present in most trusts in England, so Pathpoint can already integrate with the major electronic patient record and enterprise IT systems in use in its hospitals. It can also handle the data cleansing and pseudonymisation needed to make large volumes of data available from these systems to AI models.
We want to create a single API, so that any AI tool integrated into the Keychain product can be securely and rapidly integrated with other systems, so trusts can both experiment with new models and rapidly scale those that work for them.
At the same time, we want to prepare for that coming era of agentic AI. So, our vision for Keychain is that it should be able to do four things. First, parallel processing.
Healthcare has a lot of data, in a lot of different formats, so we want a parallel model, in which it is possible to use all of them to generate an output. Second, sequential processing. We want to be able to take the output of one model and use it to prompt another model.
Thirdly, and critically, routing. We want to make sure those outputs are generated in the right order to act as agents that undertake specific tasks within a clinical workflow. Fourth, feedback. We want Keychain to enable AI models to re-use their own outputs, so they improve over time.
Four step framework applied
To see how this might work in practice, consider referral management, which is something we are already being asked to support at scale. In the traditional model of healthcare, a patient goes to see their GP and the GP refers them to a consultant, who advises them, or refers them on to another service, or puts them on a waiting list for treatment.
Referral management intervenes to triage the patient and decide whether a secondary care consultation is the really the most appropriate next step. At the moment, this triaging can also be undertaken by clinicians; but in the future it might be undertaken by an agent.
For this to happen, the agent would need to be able to handle the referral data. This might include a large PDF from the GP. There might be an additional input from the summary care record.
There might be a handwritten note from the patient, or a response from an online questionnaire. There might be an image from medical photography. So, we might send the electronic information to one AI model, and the questionnaire data to another AI model.
Then we might feed those outputs into another model that can decide whether to send the patient back to their GP, or suggest they visit a nurse or physiotherapist, or put them on an urgent care pathway, and generate a summary to write-back to the clinical record.
The outcome should be better use of resources and the removal of a significant bottleneck to timely care; but everything is done in a transparent manner, with guardrails so the patient can be picked up and referred back into the system, if necessary.
Making sure we are Fit for the Future
Open Medical is not looking to develop AI models. We are model agnostic: we think trusts and clinicians should be able to use any model they want. We are interested in agile models, that take outputs from one stage to the next.
Our ambition is to create a framework that will enable this to happen. Keychain will be able to integrate with the systems in use in an organisation, tap into and sanitise their data, route it to AI models, take their outputs, and present them back to the organisation in a useful way within the clinical workflow.
That will improve access for suppliers and enable trusts to move from having small pockets of AI within their organisations to using it to drive efficient, timely care. The government is right that there is huge potential in AI, but I think that now is the moment to address applicability.
We need to address the scale challenge and prepare for agentic AI. Otherwise, these potentially revolutionary technologies will have much less applicability in healthcare than ministers, trusts, clinicians and their patients hope.
Every winter, local authorities across the UK face the same challenge: how to keep civic buildings, council offices and public facilities safe and accessible while managing ever-tighter budgets. When facilities managers are asked to trim budgets, outdoor winter maintenance can often come under scrutiny. If the previous winter has been mild, then cuts here can seem like an easy saving on paper. However, gambling on the weather is a risk that almost always backfires.
The true cost of “doing nothing” extends far beyond the price of a gritting contract. A frozen footpath outside a civic centre is more than just an inconvenience; it can mean resident injuries, reputational fallout, costly legal claims and angry headlines in the local press. In the public sector, where scrutiny is constant and expectations are high, one bad winter can undo years of careful trust-building.
To see how expensive this gamble can be, let’s provide a practical example. NB – this is fictionalised version based on a several real case studies. Let’s imagine a hypothetical local authority, Eastborough Council.
Eastborough Council manages a civic centre, a large library, two public leisure centres and a portfolio of community buildings. For years, it had invested around £35,000 annually in proactive winter maintenance across these sites, including 24/7 weather monitoring, pre-treatment of entrances, and gritting of car parks and pedestrian areas. But in late 2024, faced with a funding shortfall, the council voted to cancel the proactive contract in favour of reactive gritting on an ad-hoc basis.
The decision looked like an efficient saving. The previous two winters had been relatively mild, and councillors argued that if severe weather arrived, contractors could simply be called in. But as with all gambles, luck eventually ran out.
In January, a sudden cold snap swept across the region. Overnight temperatures dropped sharply, and by morning the civic centre’s forecourt, library steps and leisure centre car parks were dangerously icy. With no proactive treatment in place, staff arriving early were the first to experience the consequences. Before 9 a.m., four residents had fallen outside the civic centre and library, two of them pensioners who required hospital treatment. The library was forced to close for the day, and the leisure centre cancelled morning classes after multiple complaints about unsafe conditions in its car park.
Local outrage grew quickly. Residents took to Facebook and X (Twitter) with photos of untreated pavements outside public buildings, using hashtags like #EastboroughIce. Within hours, the story was picked up by local newspapers under the headline: “Council Cuts Back on Gritting — Residents Pay the Price.” Opposition councillors seized on the issue, criticising the administration for putting cost savings ahead of public safety.
The fallout escalated further. Personal injury claims from the falls were later settled at around £25,000 each, including legal fees. Insurers increased premiums by 15% over the next three years, adding an extra £50,000 to costs. Local businesses around the civic centre reported reduced footfall, blaming unsafe conditions for lost trade, and submitted complaints to the council. Most damaging of all was the reputational impact: a public survey conducted weeks later found resident satisfaction with the council’s services had dropped by 18 points.
By spring, the £35,000 “saving” had unravelled into more than £250,000 in direct costs, not to mention political embarrassment and lasting reputational harm. For Eastborough Council, the gamble on the weather had failed spectacularly.
The Eastborough story may be fictional, but it highlights very real risks. Across the UK, local authorities are judged not just on financial stewardship but on how well they deliver visible, everyday services. Winter maintenance is one of the most visible of all. Residents notice immediately when footpaths, car parks and civic spaces are unsafe. A single incident can dominate local media, spark opposition criticism and erode community trust. In the world of local government, those consequences are measured not only in pounds and pence but in political capital.
The financial risks are equally stark. Slips and trips are the most common type of public liability claim against councils, costing millions every year. Cutting a modest winter gritting contract may save a few tens of thousands on paper, but one claim or closure can wipe out those savings instantly. And the hidden costs – reputational damage, lost community trust, reduced footfall in town centres – are harder to quantify but often more damaging in the long run.
So why do councils continue to cut winter maintenance? The answer lies in human psychology. We underestimate low-frequency, high-impact risks, convincing ourselves that “it probably won’t snow this year.” Councillors and officers under pressure to save money may gamble that luck will hold. But in a climate where weather patterns are increasingly volatile, with sudden freezes and icy rain becoming more common, relying on chance is not foresight. It’s negligence.
The smarter approach is to see winter maintenance as an investment in public safety, continuity and reputation. That starts with recognising that preventing accidents and disruption is always cheaper than responding to them. It means conducting thorough risk assessments, reviewing past claims and incidents, and modelling the return on investment for proactive gritting. It means ensuring providers offer guaranteed response times, accurate weather forecasting and auditable records that can be shared with insurers, auditors and residents alike.
At OUTCO, we see first-hand how proactive planning protects councils and communities. By combining live meteorological data with pre-agreed service schedules, we ensure civic centres, libraries, leisure sites and car parks are treated before ice can form. Our digital reporting systems provide councils with the evidence they need to demonstrate compliance, defend claims and reassure both insurers and residents. Most importantly, it gives councils confidence that they are doing everything possible to keep communities safe, rather than hoping luck will carry them through the winter.
The lesson from Eastborough Council is clear. The most expensive decision a local authority can make is to gamble on the weather. What looked like a £35,000 saving ended up costing over a quarter of a million pounds, alongside reputational damage and political fallout that will linger long after the ice has thawed. With budgets tight and winter approaching, councils face a choice: invest in proactive maintenance, or keep rolling the dice. But as every gambler eventually learns, the odds are never in your favour.
For more information on how OUTCO can bring an innovative approach to your winter gritting, contact 0800 0432 911 email enquiries@outco.co.uk or visit www.outco.co.uk
New data reveals 488 jobs were created and hundreds of people accessed apprenticeships and work placement opportunities within a year – thanks to national procurement experts Fusion21 helping companies smash their social value targets.
Working across housing, local authority, education, NHS, and blue light sectors, Fusion21 supports its members and suppliers to embed social value into projects.
The 488 jobs were created in 2024-2025 as a result of social value commitments delivered through Fusion21 frameworks – a 37% annual rise from the 356 jobs created in 2023-2024.
These opportunities were in sectors including construction, green skills, and housing and across a diverse range of roles, including water safety technician, senior site manager and graduate bid writer.
The data also shows that 96 jobs – around a fifth of all created – were for residents living in the areas where the work was being delivered.
Statistics also reveal that 39 of the jobs created were classed as ‘green sector’, defined as those with a decarbonisation or net zero focus. These positions included retrofit assessors, solar panel installers and low carbon heating technicians.
Overall, 2,497 jobs were created or sustained within a year, with the data showing that almost 10% of new jobs went to previously unemployed residents.
The combined number of apprenticeships sustained or created also shot up from 190 in 2023-2024 to 216 in 2024-2025.
There was also a 20% rise in the total number of people who remained in secure employment, increasing from 1,674 in 2023-2024 to 2,009 in 2024-2025.
Out of 107 new apprenticeships created in 2024-2025, 16 were in the green sector, and 25 apprentices were recruited locally.
Other statistics show:
· Out of 803 contracts, 66% saw those involved taking steps to reduce carbon emissions.
· In 41% steps were taken to reduce waste e.g. supporting community-level recycling, 17% saw measures implemented to reduce water consumption, 13% ran activities to engage local communities/schools/colleges to promote the benefits of renewable energy – and 51% of contracts delivered training initiatives to upskill existing members of staff around sustainability and green skills.
· Work experience placements including site visits rocketed from 296 to 478 – a 61% rise.
As part of their social value commitments, Fusion21 suppliers contributed materials and monetary donations worth £739,787. This ranged from gifting doorbell systems, to help domestic violence survivors feel safer at home, to charitable donations to a hospice and a guide dogs charity. Suppliers on Fusion21’s frameworks also embarked on 863 volunteering days for community projects, compared to 815 the previous year. This included a supplier assembling flat pack items for a resident with young children who after staying in a women’s refuge, moved into a new property.
Sarah Maguire, Head of Social Value at Fusion21 said: “This data again shows the hugely positive impact embedding social value into projects can have.
“By working with our members and carefully selected suppliers, we have created hundreds of new jobs and apprenticeships, including opportunities in the green sector and in the communities we serve. It is particularly pleasing to see roles created for people previously unemployed.
“We are committed to leading on sustainability and, as the data shows, it’s fantastic to collaborate with like-minded suppliers and members who share our ambition to change lives.”
Through impactful procurement, Fusion21 has delivered more than £300 million in social impact and created more than 16,600 employment outcomes. As a mission-driven business, social value remains at the heart of Fusion21, and it continues to make a tangible difference while delivering social value you can see.
First-of-its-kind technology installed in over 1000 social houses across the South West
Hewer, a leader in sustainable heating solutions, has launched Heat Saviour™, a groundbreaking technology that simplifies heat pump installations and maintenance, saving time, money and hassle.
As part of its Net Zero plan, the government aims to install 600,000 heat pumps annually by 2028, with gas boilers banned in new homes from 2027. Yet heat pump sales fell short last year, barely hitting 100,000 according to the Heat Pump Association. In response, the government has pledged to double the Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) to £295m and launched a public awareness campaign to spotlight the £7,500 heat pump grant.
Heat Saviour™
Stuart Hesk, Director at Hewer, said: “Installing and retrofitting heat pumps can be complex, costly and disruptive. They are often designed with non-universal parts, requiring entire heating systems to be ripped out – systems that could have years of use left in them.
“Heat Saviour™ is a much smarter and cheaper way to install and use a heat pump, making property management easier and improving residential satisfaction. We saw the amounts of unnecessary waste, cost and downtime that installing and retrofitting heat pumps was causing. As a customer-first business, we set about inventing a solution to tackle these issues.”
Heat Saviour™ is a first-of-its-kind pre-assembled unit which conveniently sits underneath a standard hot water cylinder. Unlike traditional heat pump systems, which tie households into specific manufacturers’ components due to their singular loop design, Heat Saviour ™ enables the use of off-the-shelf components for quicker installation. Operating on a dual-circuit loop, the heat pump runs independently of the existing central heating, eliminating the need for system overhauls. This minimises disruption and downtime, cuts labour costs by up to 20%, and delivers homeowners savings of up to £2,000 per installation.
Heat Saviour™
With glycol only in the heat pump circuit (expensive antifreeze), it cuts glycol use by 80%, which is better for the environment, and allows radiator maintenance without the costly expense of having to drain and replace the glycol. The unit also has a built-in backup heating element, which can either be switched on manually or controlled remotely, avoiding downtime during maintenance or pump failure – crucial for vulnerable people – and reduces how often engineers need to enter the property.
Installed in 1,000 social houses
Over 1,000 social housing properties across the South West are already benefiting from Heat Saviour™, including those managed by social housing providers Two Rivers Housing Bromford, Green Square Accord, Rooftop Housing Group, Community Housing and Cottsway Housing Association.
Stuart continues: “There’s been no post-installation callbacks on the social housing installations since we implemented Heat Saviour™. One of the reasons for this is due to the central heating circuit being separate from the heat pump. This helps to prevent sludge from older systems – often still present even after cleaning – from reaching the heat pump filters, which can reduce performance and affect reliability.
“Our mission was to design a cost effective, durable and sustainable solution which makes the government heat pump grant go further. A design which simplifies installations from new builds to even older properties, which aren’t conducive to heat pump systems; meeting the needs of all homeowners, landlords and tenants, including social housing providers.
Sam Batt, Asset Investment Manager at Two Rivers Housing in Newent, Gloucestershire, said: “Heat Saviour has been a valuable part of our latest Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund project at Two Rivers Housing, installed successfully as part of the wider renewable technologies we have employed. Both these and the air source heating systems have proven reliable and have been an important step in our journey towards net zero. We have found them a reliable solution, smoothly installed by engineers who have been a pleasure to work with.”
Stuart added: “If the government succeeds in its goal of installing heat pumps in 600,000 UK homes a year, and each property is fitted with a Heat Saviour™, that’s an annual saving of £1.2 billion for the economy. Our unit empowers more communities to adopt greener heating methods, and most importantly, offers peace of mind – delivering reliability without the fear of premature failure.”
Founded in 1965, the company employs over 160 people, offering a wide range of heating, mechanical, electrical and renewable services for both domestic and commercial customers.
Thrive’s enhanced Impact Evaluation Standard ensures suppliers stay compliant with both the new PPN 002 Social Value Model and legacy PPN 06/20 rules.
Thousands of UK government suppliers risk falling foul of new procurement rules from last week — unless they can comply with both the old and new social value models.
Neil Macdonald
From last week, Procurement Policy Note 002 (PPN 002) becomes the mandatory standard for all new central government tenders — replacing previous rules and requiring a new approach to designing and assessing social value.
While thousands of existing contracts will continue under PPN 06/20, suppliers must now manage and report against two sets of requirements simultaneously — creating a compliance challenge across the market.
Thrive has now launched the only measurement framework and platform designed to meet this challenge from day one. Its enhanced Impact Evaluation Standard (IES) fully incorporates the requirements of both PPN 002 and PPN 06/20, enabling contractors and bid teams to switch seamlessly between models at the touch of a button.
Rob Wolfe, Managing Director, Chy Consultancy and Impact Evaluation Standard Steering Committee Member, explained: “PPN 002 sets a higher bar for social value in procurement. Suppliers will need measurement frameworks that not only incorporate the rules but drive better behaviour and make compliance practical. Thrive’s Impact Evaluation Standard is the first solution we’ve seen that addresses both the old and new requirements from day one.”
The Impact Evaluation Standard is widely regarded as the UK’s most credible and independent reporting standard for measuring social value because it is:
· Developed by an independent committee of experts, including one of the co-authors of HM Treasury’s Green Book and the Social Value Model.
· Built from the ground up to incorporate government procurement rules.
· Underpinned by the latest Office for National Statistics and government data sources, going well beyond the other frameworks which rely more heavily on the Unit Cost Database figures.
· Allows custom-built metrics to be combined with bespoke corporate reporting.
This marks the first time a UK measurement framework has been fully refreshed to incorporate both legacy and new government procurement rules. With annual public procurement expenditure in excess of £300billion, Thrive now offers suppliers and contractors a future-proof solution.
This October release introduces:
· 36 new metrics directly developed from PPN 002 requirements.
· A new framework structure aligned to the government Missions for clarity and usability.
· Platform enhancements allowing Thrives thousands of users to switch between PPN 002, PPN 06/20 and many other frameworks, instantly.
Neil Macdonald, CEO of Thrive, said: “From last week, suppliers must manage both PPN 002 and legacy PPN 06/20 contracts. Without the right measurement framework, that dual reporting burden risks delays or even lost bids. The updated Impact Evaluation Standard gives them a clear, compliant way to meet both requirements.” For more information, visit Thrive
Electric vehicle (EV) charge point operator (CPO) Believ has won the EV Debt Deal of the Year at the 2025 EVIE awards, recognising its role in helping to accelerate the rollout of public EV charging infrastructure across the UK.
Believ was nominated for its closing of £300 million of investment in June 2025, a landmark deal that will fund at least 30,000 charge points and positions Believ as one of the UK’s best-capitalised CPOs.The funding was led by Believ’s joint owners Liberty Global and Zouk Capital, Europe’s leading private equity investor in EV charging, alongside four retail and infrastructure financing banks – Santander, ABN Amro, NatWest and MUFG.
With this funding, Believ is able to deliver reliable, accessible, and scalable public charging infrastructure that will play a crucial role in supporting the UK to meet the government’s ambition to install 300,000 public charge points needed by 2030. The deal combines long-term financial security with flexible deployment capability and highlights the essential role of private capital in advancing the UK’s transition to net zero.
Believ’s expansion strategy focuses on both underserved urban areas where off-street parking is limited, and key transit corridors, ensuring equitable access to charging across the nation, and working towards Believ’s goal of cleaner air for all.
Guy Bartlett, Believ CEO, said: “We are delighted to have been awarded the EV Debt Deal of the Year Award, which recognises our efforts to ensure the investment in reliable and scalable charging infrastructure in the UK, and the urgency of the need.
“EV uptake will continue to grow as drivers see more infrastructure going into the ground and are given the confidence to make the switch to electric. At Believ, we are very proud to be at the heart of this journey.”
Health tech growth partner Highland has today revealed its new identity – reflecting a sharper focus as it helps health tech companies to find market opportunities, convince target audiences, and drive growth.
Known for nearly a quarter of a century as Highland Marketing, the company has built a strong reputation for launching and championing many successful health tech brands.
Setting a trend in the early 2000s, the company became one of the first integrated marketing and communications agencies to focus solely on health tech. Since then, it has helped a wide range of technology companies as they have hit headlines, won major contracts, influenced policy, and become market leaders.
Now formally known as Highland, the company’s updated identity reflects innovation in service provision that goes beyond traditional marketing. Health tech companies have engaged Highland to understand their viable market, to engage and convince health and care audiences, and to grow their business through a range of strategies to get directly in front of decision makers.
Mark Venables, CEO of Highland, said: “Health tech companies need more than just traditional marketing to succeed and grow. The ability to project our customers’ messages into the market remains important. But we have listened carefully to health tech companies as requirements have evolved, innovating in response. Resulting impact and the ability to respond to business objectives has led to us becoming a growth partner in health tech. Our updated identity reflects more than a brand refresh – but another leap forward to help drive health tech adoption, and take-up of technology that can make a meaningful difference to people’s lives.”
Highland’s message comes at a time of significant national focus on technology adoption in health and care. During 2025 alone the NHS 10-year health plan placed significant emphasis on moving from analogue to digital, and a separate Life Sciences Sector Plan has spelled out the importance of health tech for both health resilience and the UK economy. An urgency to scale innovation was also described in Lord Darzi’s 2024 independent review of the NHS, and in a November report on the NHS Innovation Ecosystem.
Susan Venables, founder and client services director of Highland, said: “There was an unprecedented opportunity for technology in healthcare when Highland Marketing was launched in the early 2000s. National policy is again focussed heavily on technology adoption. The emergence of innovation, including AI, is rapidly developing. And a rich UK health tech sector with thousands of companies means there is an especially strong opportunity to advance health and wealth.
“Delivering on that requires a new approach in 2025, so that innovative companies can respond to a new era in health tech – that’s why Highland has become a growth partner for our clients. I am immensely proud of the trust and confidence our team has earned in the sector, something we never take for granted. It means we have the connections, the expertise, and the services to be a driving force for health tech. As we help companies navigate the complexities of a changing sector, we are committed to helping them to find, convince, and grow their market.”
Full details of how Highland can support growth in the health tech sector can be found at highland.health.
Royal Navy sailors and marines interdict vessels carrying £35 million worth of illegal drugs in the Gulf of Oman
HMS Lancaster used crewed and uncrewed air assets to detect, monitor and intercept several high-speed drugs boats
Vital work disrupts flow of illegal drugs around the world, helping to keep narcotics off UK streets as part of the Plan for Change
Royal Marine snipers disabled a drugs boat speeding across the Gulf of Oman as frigate HMS Lancaster dealt a £35m blow to the illegal narcotics trade.
Commando snipers brought the ‘skiff ‘– zipping over the waves at speeds in excess of 40 knots while its crew tried to ditch their illegal cargo – to an immediate halt with a bullseye shot to knock out the boat’s engine.
The snipers took aim from a Wildcat helicopter launched from the warship to intercept three suspect craft in one of the most dramatic counter-drugs intercepts the Royal Navy has been involved with in the Middle East.
Pictured: HMS Lancaster’s wildcat helicopter and Royal Marines Boarding Team prepare to conduct a drugs seizure in the Gulf of Aden as part of operations in the Middle East in support of Combined Maritime Forces Task Force 150, and UK Maritime Component Command as part of Operation KIPION
More than 1½ tonnes of drugs were recovered in all – heroin, crystal methamphetamine and hashish with an estimated UK street value in excess of £35M.
Keeping the country safe is the Government’s first priority, and an integral part of its Plan for Change. The work of the Royal Navy at home and abroad is critical to the security and stability of the UK and directly contributes to the government’s Safer Streets Mission.
The UK remains steadfast in its commitment to our armed forces and has pledged to raise defence spending to 2.6% of GDP from 2027, with the aspiration to further increase it to 3% during the next parliament.
Minister for the Armed Forces, Al Carns, said:
“Outstanding work by the crew of the HMS Lancaster who stopped and seized £35M worth of dangerous and illicit drugs at sea. Moreover, a well-planned operation culminating in a surgical shot by a Royal Marines sniper disabling the engine of a vessel traveling at 40 knots. That’s excellence at work.
“Not only have our Royal Navy and Royal Marines disrupted a major criminal enterprise and kept drugs off our streets and away from our kids, but have once again demonstrated effectiveness, decisive action and the exceptionally high standard of our Royal Navy and Marines.
“I salute our Royal Navy and Royal Marines for their indefatigable work keeping us safe at home and strong abroad.”
This is the first time snipers have been called upon to use non-lethal force to disable a suspicious boat in the Gulf region – where typically slow-moving dhows are used to hide the illicit cargoes – unlike the Caribbean, where the tactic has proved effective on several occasions.
The operation began when HMS Lancaster launched her Wildcat from 815 Naval Air Squadron on a dawn patrol over the Gulf of Oman.
Her crew soon picked up three suspicious skiffs travelling at speed – and secretly shadowed them while relaying critical information back to the warship.
That allowed Lancaster to launch her Peregrine mini-helicopter drone to continue monitoring the skiffs – again undetected – providing a live video feed to the ship’s operations room.
Meanwhile, the Wildcat returned to refuel and embark a Maritime Sniper Team from 42 Commando – the Royal Marines’ specialists in boarding operations – to close in for the interception.
Pictured: HMS Lancaster’s ships Helicopter (Wildcat HMA Mk2) aircraft surveillance imagery of skiffs transiting through the Gulf of Aden, during HMS Lancaster narcotics seizure as part of operations in the Middle East in support of Combined Maritime Forces Task Force 150, and UK Maritime Component Command as part of Operation KIPION
When the helicopter appeared over the skiffs, their crews immediately increased speed to more than 40 knots and began hurling their cargo into the water to reduce weight.
Ultimately, it led to two of the skiffs being abandoned – but not the third which persisted in trying to get away.
At this point, the marines targeted the outboard engine, neutralising it with a single round, while crew of the warship’s sea boat recovered the discarded packages and located a partially-submerged abandoned skiff.
The operation highlights HMS Lancaster’s capability to deter illicit activities and disrupt the narcotics trade.
Commander Sam Stephens, Commanding Officer of HMS Lancaster said:
“I’m hugely proud of the team’s professionalism, patience, and skill throughout what was a protracted chase,”
“This operation saw Lancaster’s crewed and uncrewed aircraft working hand-in-glove under the direction of the ship’s operations room. The outcome was a highly-successful bust, removing large quantities of narcotics from the streets and preventing their profits from fuelling extremism.”
Wildcat pilot Lieutenant Guy Warry added:
“Non-lethal disabling fire has not been seen in the region and was essential in preventing the drug runners from moving their product.
“Being the Wildcat pilot carrying out a live weapons firing on drug-running skiffs whilst flying backwards to provide a stable platform for the snipers was definitely a career highlight.
“This interdiction is a true testament to the high levels of training that both the flight, MST and ship have achieved prior to the bust.”
HMS Lancaster is a Type 23 frigate deployed to the Middle East region on a long-term mission as part of wider efforts by the UK to provide regional maritime security and stability.
It’s the first bust Lancaster has scored since she intercepted a £30m shipment of illegal narcotics in late May.
Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) sought to optimize its system of suppliers’ code compliance and create total visibility across its commercial department via a single, unified platform. By leveraging JAGGAER’s Supplier Management, Sourcing, and Contracts solutions, the FCDO’s Supply Chain Risk: Ethics team has reduced supplier complaints, streamlined compliance and procurement processes and improved record keeping and collaboration.
What is FCDO?
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) was established in 2020 following the merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) with the Department for International Development (DFID). It leads the UK’s diplomatic, development and consular work around the world. Its staff operate a global network of 281 offices worldwide. The FCDO’s work in international development and aid is building a safer, healthier, more prosperous world.
The Challenge
The FCDO procures a wide range of goods, services, and contracts work, from embassy construction to technical assistance. To foster best practice and ensure effective use of UK taxpayers’ funds, suppliers must adhere to the FCDO’s values on ethics, sustainability, and responsible business, as outlined in its Supplier Code of Conduct (the Code). Historically, the FCDO’s Supply Chain Risk: Ethics team used a manual process, collecting supplier information through WeTransfer, Excel and PowerPoint, an approach that quickly became unmanageable. As a result, the team pivoted to a system originally designed for Supply Relationship Management (SRM) colleagues, inputting questions for suppliers to demonstrate compliance with the FCDO’s Code by submitting documents for evaluation. However, this system did not meet the team’s needs; it lacked scoring functionality, requiring a workaround using Excel spreadsheets to score responses and provide feedback. It was also unstable; recurring issues were seldom resolved promptly, and explanations for them rarely forthcoming. In all, the situation added growing ‘non-value’ time by having to explain issues to suppliers and eroded confidence in the platform within the team. The introduction of a new interface to the SRM system proved a tipping point for the FCDO to make a change. “We didn’t like it, we didn’t have the bandwidth to train our suppliers to use it, and it only presented the same information in a new format—we gained nothing,” says the FCDO Supply Chain Ethics Risk Manager. The team realized they needed a more reliable and stable solution, with integrated review, scoring, workflow, and reporting features.
The Solution
JAGGAER was selected as the Procurement platform for the newly created FCDO organization in 2020. This required substantial change within the commercial department, as the Supply Chain Risk: Ethics team, historically based in the Department For International Development (DFID), had not previously used JAGGAER, having relied instead on a supplier information management system. With limited time until their previous supplier’s contract expired, and subject to the same budgetary constraints as all other government departments, it was apt for the team to investigate the functionality for managing compliance inherent within the platform. “Plus, it tied in with the wider strategy of ‘one commercial’—that we would all work on one tool, with data available across different teams for different uses, but in a single location,” says FCDO Supply Chain Risk: Supplier & Financial Team Lead. When coupled with the opportunity to deliver cost savings and work across the FCDO’s entire commercial department from a “single system”, the platform’s potential presented a vast opportunity and an easy decision for leadership to support. Indeed, integrating compliance processes with the procurement process within a single system has created potential for greater collaboration within that wider commercial department. “That’s why we first and foremost investigated JAGGAER—it met those needs. And it didn’t need complex procurement after that because it had the functionality we were already paying for within our contract,” they continue.
With the system already in place at the FCO as a source-to-pay procurement platform, the newly merged FCDO added Supplier Management, Sourcing, and Contracts solutions. Information was transitioned from the legacy SIMS system to the new platform. The Supply Chain Risk: Ethics team supported suppliers with onboarding through the creation of training videos and user manuals with the Supply Chain Ethics Risk Manager and colleagues acting as ad hoc consultants to address any outstanding issues or queries—mostly around log-ins. “I’m still in the process of an initial deployment, as we have certain points in our cycle where we’re doing things for the first time in the live environment,” says the FCDO Supply Chain Ethics Risk Manager. While around 450 people are currently using JAGGAER across the commercial department—with a total of 500 licenses— that figure is around five for compliance, predicted to grow to 100, including suppliers.
When the platform was implemented as a compliance tool, it dramatically improved the supplier experience. After launching JAGGAER it for supplier collaboration, supplier complaints dropped significantly freeing up FCDO resources from circular investigations. “We had very positive feedback from suppliers,” reports the FCDO Supply Chain Ethics Risk Manager. “They like the way JAGGAER looks, the way it works, and the fact that it’s stable and reliable.” Where scoring was previously stand-alone via Excel spreadsheets—now, question sets, responses and scoring are all contained within the system. This enables better record keeping and makes it easier to access records and transfer responsibility for suppliers between team members in the event of absence or role change. Staff within the wider procurement team have visibility into whether a supplier is Code compliant or not, and integrating compliance processes with the procurement process within a single system has enabled greater visibility of supplier code compliance status within the wider commercial department.
With JAGGAER, The FCDO can now align the supplier’s Code compliance record with the Standard Selection Questionnaire (SQ) process—the first step in proving a supplier is qualified to submit a tender which involves them providing a considerable amount of basic information. Previously, suppliers had to provide this twice—once when preparing the tender and again as part of the compliance process. “Because we’re now on the same system, we’ve aligned the questions we’re asking for process documents in SQ to the questions we ask under the compliance process,” says the FCDO Supply Chain Ethics Risk Manager. “We’re comparing apples with apples—so if suppliers can show they’re Code compliant, they’re spared the time and effort of having to do it again.” The Supply Chain Risk: Ethics team successfully delivered the transfer of supplier information from its legacy compliance system to the new platform within a tight timescale. In doing so it is supporting an essential process of government with compliance now integrated into the full procurement lifecycle.
By Erica Hodgson, Change Management Practice Director at Differentis
The NHS isn’t broken because of who’s been in charge.
It’s broken because of how it works and how change has been managed in the past.
Earlier this year, the Government announced one of the biggest shake-ups in decades: abolishing NHS England and bringing the service back under the Department of Health and Social Care. Alongside this, a £3.25 billion Transformation Fund and a 10-Year Health Plan promise leaner operations, digital-first care, and more joined-up services.
On paper, it sounds ambitious. In reality, we’ve seen this before.
If you’ve worked anywhere near the frontline, you’ll know the issue isn’t structure. It’s the experience of trying to deliver care through broken systems, outdated processes, and exhausting workarounds. That’s where transformation fails: not in vision, but in execution.
As someone who helps NHS Trusts deliver change that sticks, I can say with certainty: transformation doesn’t fail because of policy. It fails when it isn’t built around people, process, and behaviour.
We don’t need another top-down restructure. We need a ground-up redesign that tackles what really stops progress: poorly managed change, disjointed processes, and systems that make care harder, not easier.
The Government’s reform and the real problems
To make this transformation meaningful, we need to be honest about what’s holding the NHS back. Without tackling deep-rooted inefficiencies and outdated infrastructure, this reform risks becoming another reorganisation without reform.
As Bev Wright, Head of UKI Public Sector at Adobe, says: “The Transformation Fund is a welcome signal of intent to unlock productivity and capability benefits of AI, but without organising data and replacing legacy systems first, it risks not moving us forward.”
The ambition vs reality:
What the Government says reform will achieve:
Reduce bureaucracy
Centralise decision-making
Streamline operations and funding
What the Transformation Fund aims to deliver:
Reduce inefficiencies
Drive transformation and reform
Support a leaner, more cost-effective public sector
But the reality remains complex. At an operational level, the NHS still faces:
Siloed data and fragmented digital systems
Poor process design and lack of interoperability
A culture that prioritises KPIs over patient experience
The State of Digital Government Report found that over half (50.4%) of public sector organisations spend more than 40% of their time and budget maintaining legacy systems — rising to 63% among arm’s-length bodies. In the NHS, 42% of processes are still paper-based. These legacy systems don’t just slow progress — they block it.
The other risk? Running before walking.
AI has been positioned as a key pillar of the Transformation Fund, but without solid foundations, it could add burden rather than value. NHS Digital leaders remain cautious, and rightly so. Without strong governance, robust data infrastructure, and clear standards, AI could become another compliance headache rather than a catalyst for change.
And while the 10-Year Health Plan promises neighbourhood health centres and digital-by-default pathways, these ambitions will fail without the right operational groundwork.
The risk of another ‘reorganisation without reform’
Previous NHS reorganisations, however well-intentioned, have often increased complexity instead of reducing it. Layering new governance over broken systems simply shifts the problem, rather than solving it.
Meanwhile, financial pressures are tightening. Trusts are expected to deliver 4% efficiency savings in 2025/26 — almost double last year’s target, and four times the NHS’s historical productivity growth rate. This comes as real-terms funding growth sits closer to 2% once inflation and cost pressures are accounted for.
These demands risk driving short-term cost-cutting rather than long-term reform. And with the dissolution of NHS England creating uncertainty around funding, many Trusts are left unsure how to progress digital projects or access new transformation resources.
That’s why the ability to control processes and maximise the use of existing funds has never been more important. Without clear safeguards, this reform risks deepening — not solving — the problems it aims to fix.
The five priorities the Government must get right
If this is to be more than another missed opportunity, reform must go beyond governance. It must address how care is delivered, how systems connect, and how change is managed.
Real transformation starts at the operational level and not the boardroom. Intelligent transformation is the key: designing systems and processes around people, powered by data, and driven by continuous improvement.
1. Follow the patient, not the process
The system must be designed around the full patient journey, not organisational silos. Clinicians cannot treat what they cannot see.
The 10-Year Health Plan promises to rebalance care around patients’ lives. But that vision depends on interoperability: the ability for systems to speak the same language, ensuring information flows seamlessly across GP, hospital, and community care.
At Nottingham University Hospitals, before rolling out electronic prescribing, we mapped every patient touchpoint — across wards, roles, and systems — to ensure digital tools matched real workflows. The result: fewer handover delays, better coordination, and safer prescribing.
That’s the difference between transformation that looks good on paper and transformation that works in practice.
2. Fix the way people work before you digitise it
Technology should amplify what works. Not hard-code what doesn’t.
Too often, new digital systems are implemented without addressing process inefficiencies first. This is where capability mapping comes in: understanding how departments actually operate, identifying breakdowns, and using technology to solve real problems, not hide them.
This approach prevents inefficiencies from being hard-wired into new systems. It ensures digital tools support — rather than disrupt — the way people work.
3. Stop draining staff to power broken systems
NHS staff don’t need resilience training. They need systems that work.
Transformation fatigue sets in when change demands extra effort but delivers little improvement. Staff want to be part of the solution, not the testing ground for poorly designed systems.
True reform must be collaborative. That means continuous feedback, co-design, and empowering teams to own change rather than endure it.
As we’ve seen in our NHS projects, co-creation reduces friction, simplifies workflows, and returns time to care. Transformation should make work easier, not harder.
4. Trust the people closest to the patient
Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) understand their communities — their needs, pressures, and digital maturity — better than any central body. They’re not a risk to reform; they’re the key to making it work.
The Government should set national standards and direction but give local teams the freedom to adapt solutions to their context. The most successful transformation programmes are those that flex to local realities, not those dictated by one-size-fits-all models.
5. Redefine what ‘good’ looks like
Dashboards don’t save lives. Better decisions do.
If the patient’s journey feels seamless for the system but painful for them, the metrics are wrong. The NHS needs to measure what matters: faster recovery, earlier diagnosis, fewer delays, and higher confidence in care.
Data should be actionable, not decorative. Every dataset should have purpose — who uses it, why it’s needed, and how it improves care. Transformation isn’t about collecting more data; it’s about using it intelligently to create meaningful outcomes.
A once-in-a-generation opportunity
This reform could be a defining moment for the NHS, but only if it tackles the operational challenges that sit beneath the headlines.
We need to stop pushing transformation onto NHS staff and start building it with them. Real reform means designing services that fit around people, not the other way around.
That’s where effective change management becomes essential. It’s not about training slides or communication plans. At its best, it’s the art and science of helping people adopt new ways of working with confidence and clarity. When done well, it connects strategy to behaviour, surfacing blockers and ensuring change sticks.
At Differentis, we’re working with NHS Trusts across the UK to help leaders map capabilities, define value, and make confident progress, even when the funding picture is uncertain. Our focus is on intelligent transformation: operational insight, people-first design, and change management that delivers measurable results.
The NHS doesn’t just need a new structure. It needs a new strategy. One built on data, collaboration, and human insight.
If the Government gets this right, it could mark the beginning of a truly smarter, more connected NHS.
A once-in-a-generation opportunity to make transformation real.
How East Riding Council is using data to drive energy decisions across its estate
As the public sector accelerates its decarbonisation efforts, East Riding of Yorkshire Council is proving that sustainability can unlock innovation, efficiency, and lasting impact.
With an urgency to decarbonise the public sector estate, one council is demonstrating that sustainability can be a driving force for transformative change.
In a recent interview, TEAM Energy spoke with Robin Barmby and Stephen Fisher, Principal Asset Officers at East Riding of Yorkshire Council, to explore their pioneering energy initiatives and strides in operational efficiency. Their approach demonstrates how data-led decision-making and creative solutions can deliver meaningful environmental impact alongside substantial cost savings.
Driffield Leisure Centre Solar Car Port
Implementing energy efficiency measures
East Riding of Yorkshire Council has made significant advances in solar energy, investing more than £2 million in rooftop installations since 2012, supported by the Feed-in Tariff initiative. Several schools have benefited from similar projects, and one of the most rewarding efforts involved revisiting sites initially deemed unsuitable and finding creative ways to install panels.
“We’ve had the most success with our solar panel rollouts,” said Robin Barmby, Principal Asset Officer. “Revisiting sites that were initially omitted and finding innovative ways to install panels has been particularly rewarding.”
The council also launched a small-scale solar farm connected to a caravan park—one of its highest energy consumers—where solar generation aligns well with peak usage. In addition, Stephen Fisher, also a Principal Asset Officer, highlighted the integration of photovoltaic (PV) systems into the council’s annual roofing programme for council-owned housing. Combined with insulation upgrades, this has proven to be the most cost-effective method for improving Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) ratings in residential properties.
Elevating energy efficiency projects through training and technology
Stephen Fisher emphasised the importance of strategic training with facilities managers, particularly on optimising Building Management Systems (BMS) to reduce energy usage. The council’s Climate Change team also plays a crucial role in raising awareness and promoting good environmental behaviours across the organisation.
Robin Barmby discussed the vital role of technology in identifying and delivering energy savings. By using benchmarking and submetering, the council has been able to pinpoint the exact zones or equipment within buildings driving poor performance. This data-led approach has made the entire process far more efficient and impactful than traditional energy audits alone.
Innovative solutions with significant impact
One of the most effective technologies implemented by the council is the Variable Speed Drive (VSD), which allows precise control of motor speed based on actual demand. This technology has been particularly impactful in leisure centres, where it has led to significant energy savings with a quick payback period.
Achieving cost savings and carbon reduction
The council’s solar projects have had the most significant impact on cost savings and carbon reduction. Additionally, LED street lighting upgrades with percentage dimming have contributed to long-term savings across the estate.
Securing funding for energy efficiency initiatives
East Riding of Yorkshire Council has been proactive in securing funding for its energy efficiency projects. Over the past 12 months, the council has secured approximately £6.5 million in funding, enabling nearly £17 million worth of project work. This includes funding from the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS), the Mayoral Fund, the Swimming Pool Support Fund via Sport England, and Warm Homes funding.
Advice for other councils
Robin Barmby advises other councils to start with reducing demand, then focus on efficiency, and finally look at renewables. Stephen Fisher adds that data analysis and benchmarking should be the first step to understanding performance across the estate and prioritise interventions.
Andrea Shoel, Business Development Manager at TEAM Energy, said:
“East Riding of Yorkshire Council’s approach to energy efficiency is a testament to the power of data-driven decisions and innovative solutions. Their success story is an inspiration for other councils aiming to achieve similar goals.”
Looking ahead
East Riding of Yorkshire Council’s energy journey is a powerful example of what’s possible when data, innovation, and strategic thinking come together. By focusing on demand reduction, efficiency, and smart deployment of renewables, the council has delivered measurable carbon and cost savings. Their success underscores the importance of long-term vision, internal capability, and dedication to revisiting and rethinking legacy projects.
Overall sentiment towards the new legislation was focused on integration and simplification, with almost 80% saying HMRC needs to do more to integrate its systems and simplify its processes
75% suggest they will be looking for technology to help manage compliance and conduct real-time audits.
Varun Monteiro
As HMRC announces its decision to introduce Joint and Several Liability in April 2026, new research from Finity has found that almost 80% of recruitment agencies want the tax authority to do more to integrate its systems and simplify processes.
Commissioned by recruitment back office platform, Finity, the survey of employees within finance departments in temporary recruitment agencies explored sentiment towards the landmark ‘Tackling Non-Compliance in the Umbrella Company Market’ legislation, set to take effect from 6 April, 2026.
Integration, simplification and technology is key
An overwhelming four-fifths (79%) of respondents state that HMRC needs to do more to integrate its systems and simplify processes. This was followed by the need for technologies to support adherence to these new legal obligations, with three-quarters (75%) suggesting they will be looking for technology to help manage compliance and conduct real-time audits.
Varun Monteiro, CEO at Finity, said: “The latest update from HMRC marks a welcome, but significant change for umbrella companies and agencies, with accountability pushed further up the supply chain and significant financial repercussions for errors.
“However, our data shows a clear call from recruitment businesses for urgent action from HMRC and the broader industry when it comes to systems, processes and enabling technologies.
“Our research, combined with our detailed whitepaper, presents a bold call to action for HMRC to provide the digital infrastructure required to tackle compliance at source. While HMRC’s accompanying Transformation Roadmap is a positive step forward, it is clear better integration and the ability to cross-check payslips with HMRC data through simple APIs, directly within payroll systems, is vital.
“Only by making essential tax information more accessible and instant, can the recruitment sector be truly empowered to verify their tax liabilities efficiently and with confidence.”
The need for a modernised and transparent tax system, powered by technology
Dale Simkiss, compliance expert and Non-Executive Director at Finity, added: “Currently, businesses in the recruitment sector face significant challenges in verifying whether tax liabilities have been accurately reported and settled in their supply chain.
“As the industry prepares for a new legislative landscape, now is the time to modernise the way we manage tax compliance, which will help ease the burden on the sector, mitigate financial risks and create a more transparent and trustworthy tax system.”
Varun Monteiro, concluded: “This will be made even more challenging with HMRC’s new regulations which seek to enforce stronger measures for tax transparency and accountability.
“As our research has indicated, there is strong desire for new technology, not least because of the lack of efficient, real-time access to tax data, which is likely to hamper efforts to comply, leaving businesses vulnerable to compliance failures, fraud or reputational damage.”
To view the full report, which outlines the roadmap Finity is proposing to help HMRC and the wider market deliver a modern and compliant tax system, please visit www.finity.co.uk/tax-compliance-whitepaper/.
A new whitepaper from Blue Frontier details key opportunities and challenges for NHS trusts amidst ongoing digital transformation.
Interoperability, patient access concerns, and public fears over AI remain prominent challenges for the NHS to overcome.
The research uses a combination of primary and secondary data to provide a comprehensive view of the sector.
James Fry
As the NHS quickly approaches its March 2026 deadline for foundational digital transformation, a new whitepaper from Blue Frontierwarns that interoperability, patient access concerns, and public fears over AI could slow future progress. ‘NHS Under Pressure: Challenges and Opportunities Facing NHS Digital Transformation in 2025 and Beyond’ aims to empower key NHS decision makers when planning their ongoing digital transformation strategy to deliver enhanced patient engagement and experience, and improved operational efficiencies while relieving resource pressures.
This report brings brand new market insights to the forefront, with primary data collected and visualised by Blue Frontier. The data in this whitepaper consists of social listening and mentions data, collected across a wide range of digital channels, including online news, social networks, podcasts, forums, and blog sites, gathered throughout the period of August 2024 to September 2025. This data has been bolstered with additional secondary information and third-party data from sources including NHS England, GOV.UK, Cambridge University, and Deloitte.
Key points include interoperability being seen as the most prominent challenge to NHS digital transformation in relation to automation, data exchange, real-time intelligence, and adopting cloud-native platforms. Between August 2024 and September 2025, there has been a 135% increase in the total number of online mentions relating to the NHS and artificial intelligence or machine learning, when compared to the previous year. However, fear and anger are the most common emotions felt by the public in conversations about AI and the NHS, accounting for just under 60% combined, with joy closely behind on 26%.
A crucial challenge for data security lies in regulatory compliance, with legislation and compliance making up 20% of discussions. Low digital literacy rates, in relation to balancing patient access and ease of use, continue to be an opportunity and a challenge, with conversations increasing by 28% from March 2025 to September 2025 compared with the previous period. Finally, budgets and costs remain a prevalent challenge for NHS trusts seeking to integrate digital transformation projects, with around 20% of the total data pool specifically referencing costs and resources as a challenge or barrier to entry.
James Fry, Managing Director at Blue Frontier, said:
“In bringing this information to the NHS at this crucial time, we’re further supporting public sector initiatives that improve efficiency and delivery of service in the UK. Responsibly harnessing technology is an effective way to reduce costs and positively impact people’s lives, and this whitepaper will provide greater insight and aid decision-making for those striving to make an impactful difference.”
To read the full report and learn more about the opportunities and challenges facing NHS trusts and what they should do to leverage digital transformation effectively, go to the Blue Frontier website
Following a highly successful 2024 event that brought together SIAM professionals, thought leaders, and industry experts from around the world, the Scopism Service North Conference is back. Remaining in Manchester, the event takes place on Monday, 3rd November, and promises to be even bigger and better in 2025.
Reflecting on 2024
The 2024 Service North Conference was a celebration of everything that makes the SIAM community unique; collaboration, innovation, and an unwavering commitment to driving service integration forward. With high-profile speakers from across the industry, engaging panel discussions, and cutting-edge insights, the event set a new benchmark for what a SIAM-focused gathering can be.
What can we expect in 2025
This year’s Service North Conference will once again gather the brightest minds in SIAM and service management for a day of insight, collaboration, and networking. The agenda is packed with forward-thinking sessions designed to inform and inspire, including:
· BoK SIAM Refresh – Get the inside track on the evolution of the SIAM Body of Knowledge, directly from the team behind the update.
· Tackling IT Challenges – The BoK author group will take to the stage to discuss real-world challenges facing IT leaders today, and how SIAM can offer practical solutions.
· Scopism SIAM Assured – In Practice – What does it mean to be SIAM Assured? This session examines how the assurance model operates in practice and the tangible benefits it provides to organisations.
…but that’s not all, there’s much more in the pipeline. Expect case studies, panel discussions, and practical sessions packed with takeaways you can apply immediately.
Event for SIAM Professionals
Service North isn’t just another industry conference; it’s the definitive space for SIAM knowledge sharing, innovation, and community building. Whether you’re a seasoned expert or just beginning your SIAM journey, this is where cutting-edge insights meet real-world implementation.
Attendees tell us that Service North offers excellent value, not just in the quality of the content, but in the opportunities to connect with peers, partners, and potential customers.
Successive UK governments have a terrible track record when it comes to large-scale projects. Almost universally, they are either late, over budget, deliver less than promised – or all three. Some, like HS2, are never completed at all.
In this edited extract from The Delivery Gap, Jonathan Simcock explores how arrogance thwarted the NHS National Programme.
In February 2002, Prime Minister Tony Blair hosted a seminar in Downing Street. He was convinced that the National Health Service in England could be transformed with the help of better IT. It was said that he had been enthused about the subject after a discussion with Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. Blair himself was there for less than an hour, but those present, including the Department of Health ministerial team of Alan Milburn and Lord Hunt, senior executives from NHS England, and several senior representatives of the IT industry, came away convinced that a step-change in the use of computers could make enough of a difference to NHS performance that Labour would be rewarded by voters at the next election.
Milburn and the NHS committed to present the Prime Minister with a national implementation plan by the end of May. It would set a timetable for hospitals and GPs to benefit from a network of new systems. Implementation of new IT would start within a year. A year earlier, Chancellor Gordon Brown had commissioned banker Derek Wanless to investigate what was required to turn the NHS in England into a service which provided safer, higher quality treatment. Amongst other findings, Wanless was scathing about the NHS’s use of IT. He concluded that, ‘A major programme will be required to establish the infrastructure and to ensure that common standards are established. Central standards must be set and rigorously applied.’
The prospectus for a massive IT Project for Health, to be known as the National Programme, was published in June. It promised greater central control and ruthless standardisation. The scope of the programme was rather vague but would include new infrastructure and a number of services including a national booking service, a national prescriptions service, and a national health records service which would be accessible round the clock from anywhere in the country. By September, the National Programme was launched, and an external expert had been hired to run it. His name was Richard Granger, a consultant from Deloitte. He had no background in health, but he did have a reputation for hard-nosed delivery.
On appointment, he was reputed to be the country’s highest paid civil servant. Granger quickly developed a plan for procuring the new systems. To counter the risk of lashing the NHS to a single IT provider, Granger decided to divide the country into five regions and procure a monopoly service into each one. As with the Astute Submarine project a decade earlier, the idea was to generate an intense competition and to load the supply chain up with as much risk as possible. In the National Programme, suppliers would be paid nothing until they delivered working services. And anyone not performing would have their region taken from them and redistributed to the other suppliers. Granger told the media that if you are using huskies to pull you to the pole, then “when one of the dogs goes lame, and begins to slow the others down, they are shot. They are then chopped up and fed to the other dogs. The survivors work harder, not only because they’ve had a meal, but also because they have seen what will happen should they themselves go lame.”
By the end of 2003, the five regional contracts had been let to four providers: BT, Accenture, Fujitsu and an American company, CSC, which won two regions. Although there were four service providers, they had between them only two developers for the most important of the new software solutions. These electronic patient record systems would allow information to be exchanged seamlessly between healthcare professionals, managers and patients. BT and Fujitsu selected a US company, IDX, and Accenture and CSC chose the UK firm, iSoft. The ten-year contracts had a total value of £6.2 billion and Granger’s commercially aggressive approach had won him plenty of fans in the centre of government.
But the input from clinicians into what the new systems would have to do was superficial to say the least. A director of the NHS Information Authority told the Public Accounts Committee two years later that the consultation process amounted to ‘asking some clinicians to comment on hundreds of pages of text in systems-speak in the space of a few weeks’. The Chair of the National Clinical Advisory Board told the same Public Accounts Committee that the NHS National Programme “was like being in a juggernaut lorry going up the M1 and it did not really matter where you went as long as you arrived somewhere on time”.
Perhaps in recognition of the lack of clinical understanding in the project, Professor Aidon Halligan, the deputy Chief Medical Officer, was appointed to work alongside Granger as joint head of the project in the spring of 2004. But it was too late to influence the contracts which had already been signed. These health experts found escape routes from the project, but none of them went public. The director of the NHS Information Authority was made redundant, the Chair of the National Clinical Advisory Board was asked to resign, and Professor Halligan quit his role in the project after six months, although he stayed on as deputy Chief Medical Officer.
Procured in a hurry, and without sufficient involvement from NHS professionals, neither of the electronic patient record system developers, IDX or iSoft, were able to get to grips with the complexities of healthcare provision in the NHS. The extremely aggressive commercial approach imposed by Granger produced predictably miserable results.
A large part of the problem was underappreciation of the fundamental differences between how healthcare is provided on different sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, the health system is administered so as to bill insurers or patients for every intervention. This isn’t how UK hospitals work. And no-one in the US health system has to administer patient waiting lists – a matter of huge importance in the NHS. Eventually there were only two regional suppliers and two electronic patient record system developers, and none of them were making acceptable progress. Parts of the clinical community were now in open revolt.
One health professional posted his disgust: ‘Now and then I check myself from hatred of what Richard Granger stands for and has done to NHS IT, and then the sheer arrogance and ignorance of his public statements brings me back.’ It was evident by 2007 that centrally implemented system deployments were not achieving the project’s objectives. Although the project limped on, 2008 was the year in which hope seems to have left the project team. Richard Granger exited quietly at the beginning of the year. Accenture and Fujitsu were gone. BT and CSC were facing huge losses. Neither of the solution providers was delivering software that was up to the job. Virtually nothing was being deployed into NHS hospitals.
The problems, always an open secret in the NHS, were now making national news. The Guardian reported that where new systems were being deployed, lack of patient data was causing delays in Accident and Emergency, cancer treatment and planned operations. Patients were exposed to the risk of infection while records were being updated manually, and in one Trust complaints from the public about their service tripled. In what could have been the final nail in the coffin, the NAO reported that the programme had largely failed to deliver on its central objective. Eventually, after the 2010 general election, the Coalition Government killed off the NHS National Programme.
To be fair to the hundreds of professionals in the National Programme over the years, there were some strands of the project that were completed and eventually gained an enduring place in the NHS. These included ‘Choose and Book’, which allowed patients to select a hospital outpatient appointment from a range of options while sitting with their GP, and ‘National Spine’, a messaging service which allowed authorised users to access a high-level summary of patient records. But the electronic patient record systems at the heart of the programme were a complete failure, which cost years of potential improvement across the NHS.
Overall, the National Programme had been a disaster. The project is a tragic case-study of how not to manage IT enabled change. You start with blindly ambitious but inexact requirements and proceed through commercially naive contracts with impossible timeframes. The results are entirely predictable. The National Programme was swamped by technical and delivery complexity. The systems’ end-users were kept as far away from involvement as possible. Lengthening timelines were met by refusal to acknowledge reality and the project ploughed on until it finally suffered the huskies’ fate that Granger had predicted for some of the IT companies.
The years lost during the failed NHS National Programme have seriously retarded the digital transformation of health provision in England. Twenty-two years after the programme was conceived, a new Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, asked surgeon, academic and peer Lord Darzi to diagnose the ills of the NHS. Amongst many other criticisms Darzi took aim at the NHS’s failure to embrace digital technologies.
“The NHS, in common with most health systems, continues to struggle to fully realise the benefits of information technology. It always seems to add to the workload of clinicians rather than releasing more time to care by simplifying the inevitable administrative tasks that arise. The extraordinary richness of NHS datasets is largely untapped either in clinical care, service planning, or research.”
r2c, a leading provider of connected fleet and workshop management solutions, has launched a new Incident Management feature, designed to help HGV fleets digitise and streamline the way they capture, track and resolve incidents.
Available now as part of the r2c connected platform, Incident Management helps to revolutionise incident reporting, resolution, and compliance for the transport industry, allowing operators to take control of incidents, near-misses, and vehicle damage from the moment they happen.
Ash Connell
Whether it’s a minor scrape or a major accident, the Incident Management feature ensures nothing slips through the cracks by digitising every step of the process.
By replacing outdated, administration-heavy paper-based processes with structured digital workflows, the system ensures faster resolutions, improved communication, and boosts compliance standards and operational transparency – all backed by a complete audit trail and real-time visibility.
“When an incident happens, things often move very fast. Many different factors come into play, from reaction, rescue and repair to issues such as operational vulnerability, compliance and risk management,” said Ash Connell, r2c Commercial Director.
“Our new Incident Management feature ensures these disparate strands are tied together so nothing gets missed, and everything happens when it should.”
Users are able to complete immediate, structured incident logging so incidents can be reported when they occur, or retrospectively, with key details added for accuracy and compliance.
Comprehensive tracking means that within each incident fleets can manage a range of scenarios, from VOR to warranty claims across multiple assets.
It also uses integrated communication tools, which can be set up to send action requests to repairers, incident managers, and stakeholders. This keeps all parties connected and informed throughout the lifecycle of the incident, from initial report through investigation, resolution, and close-out, including vehicles, scenarios, contacts, repairers, and job sheets.
As well as being integral to the management of specific incidents, data-driven Insights are also available, using built-in analytics which highlight trends, identify high-risk areas, and uncover root causes, enabling preventative measures to improve fleet safety performance.
“With this launch, we’re giving fleets the tools to act faster and work smarter when an incident occurs, while also making strategic decisions that improve both safety and efficiency,” said Connell.
“Our Incident Management module doesn’t just track what’s happened – it can help prevent it from happening again.”
This year’s Healthcare Excellence Through Technology at London ExCeL is the first opportunity for health and social care to discuss the 10 Year Plan. From the agenda to all new features like the Roundtable Zone and AI Spotlight, the show on 7-8 October has been set-up to make the most of that opportunity.
The government published its 10 Year Plan for England as the NHS prepared to mark its 77th anniversary at the start of July.
As predicted, the plan called for reform through three shifts: from hospital to community, treatment to prevention, and analogue to digital. The plan promised better IT infrastructure, a single patient record, a massively expanded NHS App, and a huge role for AI.
But there is no delivery chapter yet, and no alignment with the funding coming out of the Treasury’s spending review. So, the health and care ecosystem and its suppliers are still waiting for much of the crucial detail on how its vision will be put into practice.
Right time, right now
Some of that detail may be revealed at this year’s Healthcare Excellence Through Technology, which takes place at ExCeL London from 7-8 October.
“HETT Show 2025 is the first significant opportunity that the health tech community will have had to discuss the 10 Year Health Plan, and the agenda has been planned to inform that debate,” says Rikki Bhachu, head of marketing at organiser GovNet.
“We have also created a host of new features on the show floor to encourage free thinking, support collaboration, and introduce the NHS to suppliers with the innovation it needs, with a spotlight on the potentially transformative impact of AI.”
Powerful keynotes
This year, the HETT agenda will be delivered across five theatres, focusing on: digital maturity; infrastructure, data and cyber security; digitally empowered experience; integrated care; and workforce, adoption and productivity.
The focus on the 10 Year Health Plan will start on day one with a keynote address from NHS England. On day two, Avi Mehra from IBM, the co-chair of the HETT Steering Committee, will lead a high-powered panel.
Speakers from NICE, The Health Foundation, and RAND Europe will discuss how to navigate the new normal, and how the system will adapt and change in response to the plan. Sonia Patel, chief technology officer at NHS England, will also be taking part in a fireside chat that will explore the shift from analogue to digital in more detail.
Inspiring real-life examples
Other sessions across the show will discuss the good work trusts are already doing, the impact of initiatives that pre-date the plan but will support its delivery, and the potential of some of its specific IT initiatives.
Kevin Percival from Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, will talk about the impact that digitally transformed pathways are having on its teams and patients on a panel with Vital Hub.
William Monaghan, from University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, and Becky Taylor, from the University Hospitals of Northamptonshire NHS Group, will discuss the different approaches their organisations are taking to adopting the Federated Data Platform.
While Rachel Dunscombe, the co-chair and chief industry advisor for openEHR, will lead a panel on the potential of the single patient record. Speakers from Quantexa, the Artificial Intelligence Centre for Value Based Healthcare, Imperial College Health Partners, and The Kings Fund, will discuss how it could drive safer, smarter and more connected care.
A rare chance to hear from a decorated Olympian
It’s not just the technicalities of policy, technology, or even funding that will be key to the 10 Year Health Plan’s delivery. Leadership, teamwork, and creating the conditions that enable success will also be essential.
In recognition of this, HETT has created a special opportunity for attendees to hear from Dame Laura Kenny, a multi-Olympic and Worlds medallist, and Britain’s most successful female Olympian.
In a fireside chat on day two, she will reflect on how she rose to the top of her sport, her experience of the NHS, and the importance of exercise in building health and resilience. HETT VIPs will also have the opportunity to meet Dame Laura in person.
Navigating the innovation on offer
HETT has created an opportunity for influential health tech leaders to apply to be a HETT VIP. This unlocks access to dedicated content streams, the opportunity to contribute content, and the chance to meet a community of like-minded peers.
It’s just one of a number of options to get more out of the event. Visitors will also be able to join a new digital estates trail that will guide them across the show floor and connect them with leading suppliers and solution providers.
Attendees can drop into the Start-up Hub, to meet young and innovative companies. They will also be able to dip into a live podcast recording with the Ministry of Health Tech, a fast-growing network of future leaders that explores the trends shaping the industry.
Conversations, critical
For the second year running, HETT will open with a pre-show drinks reception and Rockaoke singalong at The Fox on 6th October from 7:30pm, to raise money for The Brain Tumour Charity.
On the day of the show itself, there will be plenty of spaces to stop, power devices, recharge, and network over the two days of the event. Whether people meet at The Rest Stop Lounge, the Roundtable Area, or the Networking Lounge, there’s likely to be one, key topic of conversation; the 10 Year Health Plan.
Rikki Bhachu says: “We know that the plan has set out some clear ambitions for its three shifts. At HETT, these ambitions aren’t just talking points, they’re at the centre of everything we do.
“From our agenda and speaker sessions to show features and exhibitor spotlights, everything is designed to support real-world delivery. If you’re leading service redesign, driving local prevention, or scaling digital innovation, this is an event you can’t afford to miss.”
By Emma Swann, partner and education law specialist at Forbes Solicitors
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Tribunals are a hot topic for schools and local authorities, with rules being enforced for presenting evidence at hearings. Emma Swann, a partner specialising in education law at Forbes Solicitors, provides a run-down of what schools need to know to avoid potential penalties.
Spotlight on SEND support
There’s a lot of interest and anticipation surrounding the provision of SEND education. Government is due to publish a whitepaper in the Autumn, outlining SEND reforms and there are calls for this to include the abolishment of SEND Tribunals.
Reports suggest there was a 55% rise in SEND Tribunal appeals during 2023-2024 (SENDIST 2024 statistics), while The Law Society Gazette reports 96% of such cases are lost by local authorities. It’s estimated this is costing tens and hundreds of millions of pounds – funds which could be redirected to delivering SEND support – and that interventions are required to address an unsustainable issue.
Emma Swann
We’ll have to wait for publication of the government’s whitepaper to see if SEND Tribunals are abolished, but this seems unlikely. During the summer, The Department for Education (DfE) indicated that forthcoming reforms do not include any such plans. Where we do have more certainty, and a point that schools should take heed of, is guidance for improving the presentation of evidence at SEND Tribunal hearings.
Focus on evidence bundles
A new Practice Direction (No. 1 of 2025) has been issued by the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary for evidence bundles at SEND Tribunal hearings. This was reportedly introduced because of an increase in irrelevant information being submitted. Judge Meleri Tudur referenced that page limits have existed for a number of years, which determine the total number of pages that can be put forward. These limits will now be enforceable, and non-compliance could see schools face penalties.
What are evidence bundles?
An evidence bundle is a collation of documents which comprise the written evidence to be considered by the SEND Tribunal. Bundles are prepared by a school and / or local authority (with support from their legal team) and must be submitted by the relevant deadlines in each case. Any information that is not included in the bundle, and which does not meet deadlines, will not be considered by the Tribunal.
A best-practice bundle should clearly and easily allow the Tribunal and all associated parties to navigate through the history of the claim. This may include documents relating to the position and claims of the relevant parties involved, Tribunal orders, any requests made by the different parties and attendance forms. Bundles should be separated into clearly defined and labelled sections, with an index hyperlinking to each relevant document.
It’s also generally considered good practice for evidence bundles to be succinct. Page limits should not be viewed as targets or a benchmark. The new Practice Direction has been introduced to encourage greater consideration about what information is included, to make bundles more effective and user-friendly for all parties.
What do schools need to know about the Practice Direction?
Tribunal Practice Directions are typically issued to provide formal instruction and guidance. In this instance, this refers to detailed rules about how schools present evidence to a SEND Tribunal.
The rules stipulate that the core part of an evidence bundle must not exceed 100 pages, while supplementary evidence must be limited to 200 pages. It’s reported that bundles have contained blank forms or pages and duplicates of the same documents. The Practice Direction has been issued to remind schools that this isn’t allowed.
Bundles must, where possible, enable ‘optical character recognition’, which makes pictures word-searchable. There are also specific rules for fonts, the format of a bundle and orientation – evidence must be arranged, so that documents can be viewed without having to be rotated. There are requirements to organise bundles in a chronological order, and schools must ensure an accurate, hyperlinked index reflects this and supports straightforward, easy navigation of the information.
As well as reiterating what should be included in an evidence bundle, the Practice Direction also outlines what should not be included. For example, any correspondence and email threads between associated parties are prohibited, unless this information is relevant to an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP). Any professional reports and school reports more than three years old and draft versions of an EHCPs must also be omitted from evidence bundles.
What are the penalties for non-compliant evidence bundles?
The Practice Direction references that non-compliant bundles may be rejected by a Tribunal, unless there is an accompanying note explaining why non-compliance is necessary. Non-compliance may also cause a Tribunal to vacate a hearing date at short notice, strike out the case in its entirety or prevent a party from participating further. In certain limited circumstances, a costs order may also be made against a party presenting an evidence bundle that does not meet SEND Tribunal rules.
Any failure to meet Tribunal deadlines to produce the evidence bundle could mean that a school or local authority is automatically barred from further participation in the proceedings and may lead to the school or local authority’s response to the appeal being
struck out. The Tribunal may choose to reinstate the proceedings, but this would be at the discretion of a Judge.
The issuing of the Practice Direction implies that the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary service will place SEND Tribunal evidence packages under greater scrutiny. Schools are best placed allowing plenty of time to compile evidence bundles, using Tribunal rules as a check list for preparing evidence and working with specialist advisors to ensure information presented at hearings is robust, relevant and compliant.
For further information about preparing for SEND Tribunals, contact Emma Swann at Forbes Solicitors.
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