Requesting Senate Advice

The Clinical Senate will respond to requests for clinical advice on matters that will support commissioner decision making from Integrated Care Systems, NHS England, health providers, Local Authorities / Health & Wellbeing Boards and other stakeholders.

A request for independent clinical advice can be made, and accepted, at any stage of service development. The Clinical Senate can:

  • Provide commissioners with informal clinical advice in the early stages of consideration and while options are being explored;
  • Support commissioners where there is a need for advice or recommendations on complex clinical issues that would benefit from a whole system, strategic response; and
  • At the request of NHS England as part of its service change assurance process, the Senate can provide independent clinical advice on a service change proposal. The Clinical Senate's involvement in this process does not preclude the Senate from offering formal or informal advice to commissioners/providers at an early or developmental stage of the service change proposal.

Working with lead commissioners, the Clinical Senate will agree Terms of Reference for a topic and then bring together the relevant expertise from its Council and Assembly Membership and, where appropriate, external experts and other relevant bodies (e.g. Strategic Clinical Networks). Details of how the advice process will work can be found in the links below.

Documents 

Return to top