Future Independent Voice for Social Care in Peterborough (Healthwatch)

Peterborough City Council is inviting potential providers to attend a market engagement event to help shape the future of independent voice and engagement for Adult Social Care in Peterborough.

We want to hear from organisations with experience of listening to people, engaging communities, gathering insight, and ensuring that residents' voices influence how services are designed and improved. Your feedback will help us test our proposed approach and understand how the market could support a future service from April 2027

Current Context

Healthwatch Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to deliver the statutory local Healthwatch function in line with the Health and Social Care Act. Under this arrangement Healthwatch Cambridgeshire and Peterborough act as an independent champion for residents when it comes to health and social care services. They ensure local people's voices are heard and used to improve care across our communities.

This contract expires in April 2027.

Should it become law, the NHS Modernisation Bill will remove PCC's statutory duty to establish a local Healthwatch covering health and care services. Instead local authorities will have a broader duty in relation coproduction of social care services.

The Future Service

Despite these changes, PCC want to ensure that, from April 2027, there is still an independent voice for local people using Adult Social Care services. At a minimum, Key deliverables will be:

• Providing a route for feedback into the council
• Ensuring the voice of those impacted contributes to council decisions relating to Social Care.
• Analysis and presentation of themes, creating a picture of local demand, priorities and areas for improvement
• Support a range of partnership boards, focused on key local priorities and areas of need
• Establish a visible, trusted presence in Peterborough.
• Broad engagement of all people and communities in Peterborough, ensuring there is a representative voice
• Establishing a strong feedback loop, where people are clear on the impact their voice is having

Timeline

PCC's existing contract with Healthwatch Cambridgeshire and Peterborough expires of 31st March 2027. As such, we are currently aiming to launch the ITT for the new service in September 2026.

Event

We would really value the input and feedback of potential providers on the proposed model. We will be holding a market engagement event for interested providers on Tuesday 4th August. The event will cover:

• The proposed service model