The ICB receives a fixed budget from central government and must arrange for the provision of healthcare to the extent it considers necessary to meet the reasonable requirements of its patients, subject to the statutory duty to stay within its allocated resources.

Directly commissioned services include those provided through primary, secondary and tertiary care providers, the independent sector, voluntary agencies and independent NHS contractors.

The ICB seeks to take decisions about which services to commission through a systematic approach which is centred on the needs of the patient but which fairly distributes services across different patient groups. Given resource constraints, the ICB cannot meet every healthcare need of all patients within its area of responsibility. The fact that the ICB takes a decision not to commission a service to meet a specific healthcare need due to resource constraints does not indicate that the ICB is breaching its statutory obligations. The mechanism through which investment and disinvestment decisions are taken is through a range of ICB processes.

This priority setting process is supported by a series of generic commissioning policies which can be accessed below:

Thumbnail Title Date Posted Size
PDF file icon Collaborative Commissioning Policy - Ethical framework for priority setting and resource allocation 08/05/2025 0.42 MB
PDF file icon Collaborative Commissioning Policy - Individual Funding Requests - Version 2.1 – October 2018 08/05/2025 0.71 MB
PDF file icon Collaborative Commissioning Policy - Defining the boundaries between NHS and Private Healthcare 08/05/2025 0.36 MB
PDF file icon Collaborative Commissioning Policy - Patients changing responsible commissioner - Version 2.1– July 2018 08/05/2025 0.32 MB
PDF file icon On-going access to treatment following the completion of industry sponsored clinical trials or funding - Version 2.1 – July 2018 08/05/2025 0.43 MB
PDF file icon On-going access to treatment following the completion of non-commercially funded clinical trials covered by Department of Health Guidance HSG (97) 32 - Version2.1– July 2018 08/05/2025 0.42 MB
PDF file icon On-going access to treatment following the completion of a trial explicitly funded by the Clinical Commissioning Group - Version 2.1 – July 2018 08/05/2025 0.40 MB
PDF file icon On-going access to treatment following a ‘trial of treatment’ which has not been sanctioned by the Clinical Commissioning Group 08/05/2025 0.32 MB
PDF file icon In-Year Service Developments and the Clinical Commissioning Group’s approach to treatments not yet assessed and prioritised - Version 2.1 – July 2018 08/05/2025 0.38 MB
PDF file icon Implementation and funding of guidance produced by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence - Version 2.1 – July 2018 08/05/2025 0.43 MB
PDF file icon Collaborative Commissioning Policy - Experimental and Unproven Treatments 08/05/2025 0.47 MB
PDF file icon Personal Health Budgets Policy ICB 2024 08/05/2025 0.79 MB