Integrated Neighbourhoods Teams (INTs)

Neighbourhood health is a key part of the 10 Year Health Plan for England, published on 2nd July 2025. The publication acknowledges the current hospital-centric approach of the NHS and the need to shift to provide continuous, accessible and integrated care via the development of a neighbourhood health service. The plans says this will bring professionals into patient-centred teams, reducing fragmentation of care and improving access to general practice and enabling hospitals to focus on providing specialist care.

The Government says the neighbourhood health service will embody their new preventative principle that care should happen as locally as it can: digitally by default, in a patient’s home if possible, in a neighbourhood health centre when needed, in a hospital if necessary.

Integrated Neighbourhood Teams will play a central role in improving health outcomes, focusing on prevention, shifting care towards primary and community services, and reducing health inequalities.

There is growing consensus on what and who these teams should include. At their core, they will bring together professionals who regularly interact with the local population and with each other. These teams typically include:

• General practice (GP) staff and other primary care workers
• Community nurses, health visitors, and allied health professionals (AHPs)
• Mental health workers
• Social care and home care staff
• Children’s services staff
• Community pharmacists, dentists, and optometrists
• Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations
• Other relevant local agencies

This is often described as a “team of teams” approach. A key goal is to simplify how people access care by reducing the number of different entry points and replacing complicated referral systems with faster communication and more collaborative, team-based care. In some cases, this could mean combining administrative teams and having one clear point of contact for coordination.

These teams will also be able to access specialist support when needed, particularly for services that are better managed across a wider area—such as palliative care, housing support, musculoskeletal (MSK) services, dietetics or hospital-based care.

With the implementation of INTs underway across the country, please see further information on INTs in Surrey and Sussex by clicking on the respective tabs.

To help our contractors understand the Integrated Neighbourhood Teams (INT) work, CPSS has created this short document as an introduction to INTs and the role of community pharmacy. This introduction can be found here and we will continue to produce short guide like this as the INT work progresses.

Within Sussex, a Community Pharmacy Integrated Neighbourhood Team role has been funded. A brief overview of the Community Pharmacy Integrated Neighbourhood Team Lead (CP INT Lead) role can be found here.