NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB is at the leading edge of the Government's plans to launch 100 out of a planned 250 neighbourhood health centres (NHCs) by 2030. 

Blackburn with Darwen (see box opposite) was one of 43 places announced by the Government in September 2025 to be the first to roll-out neighbourhood health services. 

The ICB's estates team is currently working on around 60 projects, ranging from new builds to refurbishments and minor upgrades, with the first NHC targeted for launch in 2030 and the last scheduled for 2036. 

Choosing the sites 

When choosing sites for the programme, Lavery said the focus of the strategic estate leads was to maximise the use of the ICB's existing buildings. 

He added: ‘The former CCG had three estate leads responsible for a particular geographical area - Central, West, and Fylde & Wyre.  With the formation of the ICB, we were fortunate to recruit Kayley into the team which enabled us to reorganise the geographical areas and to redistribute the range of projects. It also meant we could give particular focus to East Lancashire, which we knew required a lot more of our attention.

‘We looked at the buildings within East Lancashire and quickly found there was lots of underutilised space, so in terms of selection criteria, some of the buildings actually chose themselves.'

Riley agreed, adding: ‘Nine out of our 10 LIFT (Local Improvement Finance Trust) funded Community Health Partnership (CHP) owned properties are in East Lancashire. 

‘In a way they were the newest part of our portfolio so for a long time they have just run themselves and maybe not been utilised to their best. We now have the opportunity, via the CHP Securing the Future programme, to review these buildings, realign services where needed and achieve higher efficiency from good quality assets. 

‘While East Lancashire had all the new build and investment 15-20 years ago, there's other areas within Lancashire that have had virtually no investment - because of this there are lots of dated, pre-war properties. 

‘So that's driving us to look at investment in those areas, along with the integration of primary care and some of the out-of-hospital services that need to shift into the community. Neighbourhood health is not just about buildings, it's about ensuring that our residents have access to services they need in a variety of locations, but quality estate needs to support this.'

The vast majority of the 60 projects will involve refurbishing and repurposing existing sites, including GP practices, health centres and small community hospitals. 

New builds 

Riley said the team was developing plans for ‘four or five new build NHCs' with finance agreements yet to be determined. 

‘It will be interesting because developing and building any new facility can take a considerable length of time, hopefully different financing options will become available to support larger new build schemes, but in the meantime, we must make the best of what we have and prepare robust business cases for when funding options do become available,' she added. 

‘Additionally, the DHSC will have made a decision on LIFT estate as to whether these are going to be become owned by the NHS, or under a remodelled finance arrangement, which again will be interesting to see how this is navigated.' 

The strategic estates lead said the ICB had not yet had any ‘firm conversations' with private finance over funding new builds, adding she expected it would be required for some of the bigger schemes such as its £60m Preston project. 

Population 

In terms of population, the NHCs are planned to serve areas from around 40,000 in Accrington to 150,000 in Blackburn. 

‘It's what we can deliver to the population and how they can access those services that matters,' Lavery said. 

‘It's not necessarily just about the one building being the focal point. 

‘We have virtual networks and a range of buildings where we'll deliver a range of services from, but they do not necessarily have to be health buildings, they could be local authority buildings or leisure centres where those services can also be delivered – in some instances it's about usership not ownership.'   

Riley added: ‘It's about us maximising the breadth of the estate we have first and foremost, and looking at where we haven't got it. That's where we're going to be working really hard to secure investment wherever possible.' 

‘What we're all about is the patient'

Lavery agreed, concluding: ‘We're creating capacity which gives better services to the populations we serve, because at the end of the day, what we're all about is the patient. In opening up that additional capacity and increasing utilisation, we're taking the pressures off the system and the hospitals, where it's really expensive to actually get treated, and in also doing that and maximising the utilisation of the buildings, we're reducing unnecessary void cost that we've got in the buildings themselves. 

‘For example, for a LIFT building, because of historical arrangements, whether that's full or empty, your local ICB is actually still picking up the cost of that. So why wouldn't we maximise the utilisation of that?  Reducing those void costs is reducing costs to the ICB as a system, which then enables us to invest more in patient care as well.'