the government's plans to establish integrated care systems as statutory bodies and to end the legacy of 30 years of market reforms to the NHS are welcome and feel different from previous reorganisations (1)

every previous reorganisation I've worked through has been imposed by politicians. This time the main changes have been in development for 5 years and the law is catching up with work led locally by the NHS and its partners (2)

the response to Covid has depended on collaboration within the NHS and between the NHS, councils, the VCS and many others. Formalising collaboration in ICSs should make this easier in future (3)

ICSs will take a lead in joining up care around people and using all assets to tackle inequalities and improve population health - building on progress since 2016. This is even more important in the social and economic recovery from Covid (4)

legislation is necessary but not sufficient: the really hard and work happens locally and centres on relationship building and bringing health and care teams together to deliver the best possible care to patients and users. This takes time but is the right thing to do (5)

Three thing are missing: a sustainable settlement for social care, a cross govt commitment to tackle health inequalities, and a properly resourced workforce strategy for health and care (6)

finally, why does the govt want to take back control when the NHS has done a magnificent job during the pandemic? Politically led initiatives like test and trace have performed much less well and the case for Ministers to be more involved with the NHS is unproven at best (7)