NEWS

All the latest news and views from Bild.

4 July 2025

Bild’s Response to the NHS 10 Year Plan

This week, Keir Starmer launched the NHS 10-Year Health Plan, outlining an intention to introduce Neighbourhood Health Services based in local centres and to expand health service capacity.

Bild welcomes the plan’s commitment to addressing health inequalities and bringing care closer to communities. We were also encouraged with the announcement earlier in the week that mental health, learning disability, and autism would be one of five national priority programmes in the new NHS structure.

As plans for these Neighbourhood Health Centres are developed and NHS capacity is expanded, it is vital that services are designed to meet the needs of people with learning disabilities. Truly inclusive and accessible healthcare is essential to reducing the deep-rooted health inequalities people with learning disabilities, and autistic people, face.

The Plan acknowledges the appalling fact that people with learning disabilities, on average, die 20 years younger. Getting community-based healthcare right is vital to ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to live long, happy and healthy lives.

It is also vital that this shift to prevention and community-based care, aligned with the ambitions of the Darzi review, fully include mental health services, not just physical health. While there is mention of improved urgent and emergency support, and a pledge to “transform mental health services into 24/7 neighbourhood care models” there is little detail of wider plans.

Community-based mental health support must be designed with, and accessible to, people with learning disabilities and autistic people; this means health and social care working together to provide the right support at the right time. And for this to happen, social care reform will be key. Without this, the plan risks a continued failing to meet the aims of the Building the Right Support programme – the national initiative to reduce the number of people with a learning disability and autistic people in a mental health inpatient setting. We note that there is no mention of Building the Right Support nor Transforming Care within the government announcement.

Ben Higgins, Bild CEO said:

The government’s focus on shifting care to communities and focusing on prevention is positive, and we look forward to detailed proposals on how the government intends to build and fund services that meet the needs of people with learning disabilities and autistic people.

Despite past commitments, successive governments have failed to end the unnecessary and inappropriate detention of people with learning disabilities and autistic people in mental health institutions. The mental health act reforms aim to achieve this goal where previous governments have failed. However, this will only happen when there are appropriate trauma-informed community-based services to support people with learning disabilities and autistic people. There is an urgent need for government to develop a new building the right community support action plan. Bild stands ready to work with the Department of Health and Social Care and other partners in shaping this.

Kate Brackley, Bild’s Learning Disability Adviser, said:

It’s important to get the new NHS 10-Year plan out, but it has to be right for people with learning disabilities, as health is a really important part of our lives.

We would like to reduce all health inequalities and stop people with learning disabilities dying of a younger age, of things that can be preventable. I think it is a good idea to stop people from going into hospital in the first place, this could really help people with learning disabilities who die from things that can be avoided.