Power of Communities: a new chapter

VCSE Voices Group

Hello, we are Kaneez, Sam, Julie, Maddy, Angela and Pip, and together we help bring VCSE voices from across West Yorkshire into the Power of Communities work.

For people who are less familiar with Power of Communities, this means the work is continuing, but with leadership now held more directly by VCSE partners across West Yorkshire. The focus is on making sure the sector’s voice, evidence and local relationships continue to shape neighbourhood health, commissioning and system-level decisions.

The ICB has shown a strong commitment to our diverse voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector through the Power of Communities work. This has included investment of both effort and funding, including a formal commitment to commissioning principles and West Yorkshire becoming the first Keep it Local Integrated Care System in the country. Funding has supported delivery focused on our most marginalised communities, as well as workforce and infrastructure support for the sector. Together, this is changing how our sector and system partners work together. You can read more in the previous Power of Communities blog.

We are proud that this work has been nationally recognised. The ICB and Power of Communities team, working with national organisation Locality, have improved contracting and procurement engagement with the sector and helped make the ICB’s commitment to Keep it Local real and tangible. This work won the North East and North Cumbria and Yorkshire and Humber regions’ Commercial Procurement Skills Development Network Sustainable Procurement Award 2026 and was commended in the Excellence in Social Value category of the UK National Public Procurement GO Awards in June.

Since April, our Power of Communities work has entered a new phase following a reduction in ICB team capacity. Leadership is now being held by VCSE place leads and VCSE Voices, representing third sector voice, influence and support organisations across our five places and communities of interest. The ICB continues to support the work through embedded strategic commissioning and partnership commitments to the sector. On behalf of the place leads and VCSE Voices, we wanted to share our priorities, what is happening now, and where we hope to take the work next.

Our priorities

We have agreed four priorities for our work this year.

  1. Equity and inclusion.
  2. Common data sets and work on evaluation tools to demonstrate impact of VCSE sector.
  3. Voice and influence in new NHS West Yorkshire ICB structures.
  4. Funding flow, including how we support system working and how money flows into and within our sector.

We are meeting in the autumn to discuss principles/values of working together and how we operate.

What we're doing now

The handover has not stopped the work. What has changed is who is driving it.

The handover was planned and transition arrangements, agreed with ICB colleagues and infrastructure and VCSE Voices leads, were taken to the final Power of Communities Board in March. These set out:

  • How the sector now holds this work with points of contact for the priorities above
  • Continued sector representation on the West Yorkshire Partnership Board and system leadership groups, including neighbourhood health, co-chaired by Kim Shutler, and strategic commissioning and system development, chaired by Ian Holmes. We are also reviewing the boards our West Yorkshire representatives sit on
  • Maintained links into national networks including Alliance 42
  • Work with ICB colleagues and universities on a programme to build evidence of the sector's outcomes
  • Place provider partnerships - all five place leads are locally involved in work being developed across our places. We are seeking to align our activity with wider West Yorkshire ICB and Combined Authority work to ensure the connections and influence that the programme built are carried directly into its next chapter, but - as are so many of our colleagues - doing this with diminished resource.

In June and July, third sector representatives from across West Yorkshire took part in two days of university-led evaluation training in Bradford, delivered by four universities: Bradford on data and data visualisation; Huddersfield on theories of change, logic models and implementation; Leeds Beckett on patient experience and outcome measures; and Leeds on health economics, return on investment and cost effectiveness. Alongside the training, a workshop series with ICB colleagues is developing a common dataset for evidencing the sector's impact within integrated neighbourhood health - seeking to develop a shared way for VCSE organisations to demonstrate what we contribute, in terms that the wider system recognises.

Where we're taking it

Our ambition for the next chapter is straightforward: a third sector across West Yorkshire that is valued by partners and equipped to show its impact as core delivery infrastructure for neighbourhood health.

We have also been clear about the principles we will hold ourselves to as we lead this work: that we are stronger together; that we are committed to growing diverse leadership across our sector; that we work to develop trust and for the shared good; and that we believe in the power of our collective voice. And we will keep asking the system, in turn, to uphold its own principles for working with the sector.

Get in touch

Power of Communities is led in each place by its VCSE infrastructure organisation. You can sign up to the newsletters for your local VCSE infrastructure organisation or find out more about them by visiting the websites below:

We warmly invite partners across West Yorkshire to stay connected, share their insight and work with us as we take this next chapter forward together.