Our work
Our work
The Partnership initially agreed 10 Big Ambitions as part of its five-year strategy in 2020. Progress has been made across a range of issues covered by these strategic ambitions.
We have now reviewed the partnership’s priorities, in the context of the Government’s 10-Year Health Plan and the West Yorkshire Mayor’s Healthy Working Life plan.
The ICB has identified three over-arching priorities in its strategic plan: improving life expectancy, improving healthy life expectancy, and tackling inequalities.
The partnership will focus on these simplified priorities and on supporting delivery of the Mayor’s Healthy Working Life plan.
In 2025/26, the ICB delivered against a range of targets and achievements. A small number of examples are included below.
Cancer
In 2025/26, the ICB hosted the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Cancer Alliance. As a result of organisational change and the Model ICB Blueprint, the Cancer Alliance has now successfully transferred to the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT). In 2025/26, the total number of patients waiting more than 62 days for investigation and treatment for cancer across NHS West Yorkshire ICB is lower now than it was last year, achieving our target as a system.
We are on track to regularly meet the cancer faster diagnosis standard, so that 80% of patients who have been urgently referred by their GP for suspected cancer are diagnosed or have cancer ruled out within 28 days. In October to December 2025, our rolling quarterly performance was 78.5%, with a steady year-on-year improvement demonstrated.
Planned care
Patients on waiting lists that have been referred to hospital and are awaiting either an outpatient appointment or a surgical procedure. Over the past 12 months, the overall waiting list has reduced by 0.7%, in line with the national reduction of 0.8%. Significant progress has been made in reducing the number of patients waiting the longest for treatment, with almost all patients waiting 65 weeks or more now cleared.
Our longest waiting patients continue to predominantly sit on surgical pathways. As a result, system-wide efforts are focused on improving theatre productivity, redesigning pathways and reducing unnecessary outpatient activity. We remain committed to reducing the number of patients waiting over 52 weeks, with most organisations now achieving the interim constitutional 18-week Referral to Treatment (RTT) standard of 65%.
Making better use of technology to improve and strengthen health and care in West Yorkshire
Following the Digital, Data and Technology Strategy discovery phase and the publication of the Model ICB Blueprint, NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board commissioned the Business Intelligence (BI) Infrastructure Consolidation Programme. The programme is a core enabler of the ICB’s system leadership role, underpinning population health management, strategic commissioning and improved value for money by progressing towards a single, standardised BI capability across West Yorkshire.
During 2025/26, the programme moved from discovery into delivery, with a deliberate focus on establishing the conditions required for sustainable, system-wide change. System-wide governance and assurance arrangements were put in place, providing clarity on accountability, scope and decision-making and enabling BI consolidation to be managed as a strategic ICB programme.
A significant milestone has been the development of new data sharing and data processing agreements between NHS West Yorkshire ICB, NECS and General Practice. These agreements established a consistent, lawful and system-wide basis for the use of GP data and enabled linkage with NHS and non-NHS datasets, addressing longstanding variation in data access and governance.
In 2025, residents of West Yorkshire submitted over 2.4 million Online Consultation requests to their GP practices, demonstrating sustained demand for digital access as a ‘front door’ to Primary Care. This usage is expected to increase further during 2026 following changes to the GP Contract, which require all practices to keep Online Consultation systems open throughout core hours from 1 October 2025.
Integrated Neighbourhood Health
In July 2025, The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England (NHSE) invited colleagues across the health and care systems in England to participate in the National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme (NNHIP).
141 proposals were received from teams bidding to join Wave 1 of the programme, which included three from West Yorkshire. We were pleased to confirm that all three of our bids were approved.
The three West Yorkshire pilots are taking place in Bradford District and Craven, Leeds and Wakefield. This work is already showing how multi-disciplinary teams, partner organisations, the VCSE sector, patients and local communities are working together, at pace, to help shape and influence the future direction of integrated neighbourhood health nationally, by sharing best practice.