Being commissioned by the Mayor of London to produce independent reviews of proposals for major service change, affecting Londoners, perfectly aligns with our commitment to help the health and care system make better decisions and ultimately achieve benefits for population health and wellbeing. 

The Mayor of London has a statutory duty to reduce health inequalities in London and a general duty to improve the wellbeing of Londoners. Although not responsible for health and care service delivery, the Mayor champions, challenges and collaborates with the NHS and other health partners on behalf of Londoners.

One key way this is achieved is through the application of the Mayor’s Six Tests that must be met before the Mayor will support any major health and care transformation or service reconfiguration in London. The tests cover:

• Health and healthcare inequalities
• Hospital beds
• Financial investment and savings
• Social care impact
• Clinical support
• Patient and public engagement.

To inform the Mayor’s position, a systematic, objective and independent assessment is commissioned. This is the role the Strategy Unit has been asked to take. We will add each report to this page as it is completed. The letters that the Mayor writes after each review can be found here.

We particularly welcome this commission from the Mayor for two reasons:

• We are committed to adding public value and acting with objectivity and integrity, and we do this by enabling better evidence to inform better decisions and lead to better outcomes. So, we were struck by the Mayor’s desire to drive further improvement in change proposals rather than to take a simple binary stance on them.
• The Strategy Unit exists to improve health outcomes and to reduce health inequalities. Recognising that the COVID-19 pandemic had a disproportionate impact on Londoners and widened health inequalities across London, the Mayor strengthened the tests, informed by a report from the Nuffield Trust.

Our reviews of completed service change proposals complement the advice to those developing proposals that we prepared for the West Midlands Clinical Senate on behalf of Clinical Senates nationally. This was designed to help sponsoring organisations ensure that they are building the required evidence from the outset, minimising the risk of any delay.

Our reviews to date include:

The future location of very specialist cancer treatment services for children living in South London and much of South East England