North East London Anchor Charter

Collectively north east London public services have buildings, people and spending power that can be used to support our local communities to tackle health inequalities and improve the local economy. All NHS Trust and Local Authority chief executives have signed up to a NEL Anchor Charter, available in the downloads section, with a set of principles that support using these assets to better support our local communities.

We are collaborating as a ‘NEL Anchor System’ four key priority areas:

1. Widening access to employment, training and a proving the best working experience – for example, we established a Health Careers and Employment Hub for NEL people, including plans for 750 individuals from underrepresented groups to be supported into work. We are developing the NEL People Strategy to set out how we will work collectively to address some of our biggest workforce challenges across health and social care.
2. Procurement for social value – exploring how social value commitments in the process of buying services and equipment can align to the needs of the local population, and help achieve NHS NEL strategies.
3. Maximising the value of our buildings and land – for example, the integrated health and wellbeing hub at Barking Riverside where multiple health and community services will operate from the same place, which improves partnerships and health outcomes.
4. Supporting a greener and healthier future – we have a NEL ICS Green Plan that sets out how we will work as a health and care system to meet the ambitious target to reduce our carbon footprint by 80% by 2028 and to net zero by 2040.