If you bring together a team with the right skills and capability, relationships, connections, there is so much that we can fix and sort in our broken health and care system.
Toby Hyde, Chief Strategy Officer, West Herts Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, one of the partner organisations in the West Hertfordshire Neighbourhood Integrator
08 December 2025
Working with Macmillan Cancer Support and Social Finance to shape a new locally-focused model of health and care delivery
An array of public sector, voluntary, community, faith or social enterprise organisations can support ill or vulnerable people, but there is often limited coordination between them at a local level, and no mechanism to understand an area’s specific needs, in particular the needs of minoritised communities. King’s Business School researchers have advised on a new model that aims to improve the planning of local provision and give local communities greater voice.
Dr Clare FitzGerald and Dr Alec Fraser were invited by Macmillan Cancer Support and Social Finance to act as ‘learning partners’ on the development of the Neighbourhood Transformation Fund (NTF). The first of these, the £10 million West Hertfordshire Neighbourhood Integrator (WHNI) was launched in September 2025 and funded by Macmillan to shift the care of those at risk of frailty from hospital to the community.
Social Finance and Macmillan had previously collaborated on the Macmillan End of Life Care Social Investment Fund and wanted to adapt their approach to improve the integration of the whole spectrum of heath and care providers. As part of the design process, Social Finance, Macmillan and King’s consulted with both voluntary and statutory health and social care providers from across the UK to understand their needs.
The Neighbourhood Transformation Fund, the new model emerging from these conversations, builds on existing collaborations. It takes its financing model from Social Outcome Contracts, a form of finance where a funder provides up-front finance and receives repayment when defined desirable outcomes have been reached. Its coordination model is influenced by research on ‘anchor institutions’, which emphasises the importance of local long-term partnership work between statutory and non-statutory organisations. The Macmillan NTF will provide financing on a non-profit basis and will be governed by a community interest company (CIC) carrying out the coordination mechanism. The CIC will work with local statutory and non-statutory bodies to determine local priorities and the measures and services needed to address them, as well as defining the desired outcomes that will trigger repayment.
There are now two Neighbourhood Transformation Funds being piloted by Macmillan and Social Finance. The King’s Business School team will continue to act as learning partners, advising stakeholders and evaluating their success with other locally situated academic partners.
Earlier this week, King’s Business School hosted an event for other potential adopters of the model to explain the research and thinking behind the new model. The discussion also included some early feedback on how the first NTFs are progressing, including the story of ‘Alan’, who the West Hertfordshire Neighbourhood Integrator (WHNI) had been able to help access a range of services locally, from exercise at a local hospice to a local authority carer's assessment for his wife.
Find out more
Read the research behind the Neighbourhood Transformation Fund Model in Public Money and Management
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Senior Lecturer in Public Administration & Management
Reader in Public Policy & Management