West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) has published a new report alongside Locality, setting out its journey to becoming the first “Keep it Local” Integrated Care System
Alongside this, a national Keep it Local Commissioning Guide for Health has been released, drawing on learning from West Yorkshire and offering practical guidance for commissioners across the country.
Together, these documents signal a clear direction of travel for health commissioning — one that places communities, social value and the VCSE sector at the heart of neighbourhood health.
What is Keep it Local?
Keep it Local is an approach to commissioning that strengthens local economies and improves outcomes by working in genuine partnership with voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations.
The newly published national guide sets out 10 practical steps for commissioners to embed this approach in health services. It emphasises:
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Understanding the benefits of working with local VCSE organisations
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Considering flexible commissioning routes under the Provider Selection Regime
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Using grants appropriately alongside contracts
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Engaging early and co-designing services
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Making procurement processes proportionate
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Thinking carefully about scale and accessibility
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Going beyond traditional approaches to measuring social value
The guide is clear that local VCSE organisations are uniquely positioned to tackle health inequalities, address the wider determinants of health, and support prevention through neighbourhood-based services.
What West Yorkshire has done differently
The West Yorkshire report explains how the ICB has embedded Keep it Local principles into its commissioning and procurement processes.
A key development has been rethinking how social value is captured under the Provider Selection Regime.
Rather than treating social value as an “add-on”, West Yorkshire has developed a framework that captures intrinsic social value across all five scoring domains — including quality, integration, access and reducing health inequalities.
This means that:
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Community-rooted organisations can demonstrate the value of trusted relationships and local reach
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Lived experience and co-production are recognised within quality scoring
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Reducing inequalities and addressing wider determinants of health are properly weighted
The report also highlights plans for VCSE representation on evaluation panels and continued training for procurement teams to strengthen understanding of the sector’s contribution.
This is significant. It moves away from transactional commissioning towards relational, partnership-based working.
Why this matters now
West Yorkshire ICB is transitioning further into its role as a strategic commissioner, while developing:
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Place Provider Partnerships
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Integrator teams
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Integrated Neighbourhood Health models
Embedding Keep it Local principles at this point matters because commissioning decisions will shape how resources flow into communities for years to come.
If commissioning processes favour scale over local knowledge, or compliance over relationships, smaller community organisations risk being excluded.
The West Yorkshire approach attempts to rebalance that dynamic.
It recognises that:
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Prevention often happens in communities, not hospitals
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Trust is built locally
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Tackling health inequalities requires culturally competent, neighbourhood-based support
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Long-term sustainability depends on investing in local capacity
Access the documents
You can read the national guide here.
You can read the West Yorkshire journey report here.
Further information about the Keep it Local movement is available via Locality.
How West Yorkshire became the first “Keep it Local Integrated Care System”.
What this means for Leeds and the wider VCSE sector
For VCSE organisations across Leeds and West Yorkshire, this is more than policy language.
It signals:
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A commitment to embedding social value within the Provider Selection Regime
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Greater recognition of the intrinsic value community organisations bring
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A shift towards neighbourhood-based, prevention-led models of care
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An opportunity to shape commissioning through early engagement and co-design
The real test will be how these principles translate into live procurement exercises and long-term funding arrangements.
We will continue to monitor how this develops locally and what it means in practice for VCSE organisations working across health and care.
