Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care System (ICS) has published a Green Plan that outlines the aims and actions partners across the system will take to meet the NHS’ ambitions to reach Net Zero by 2045.

Norfolk and Waveney ICS’s Green Plan 2022-2025 demonstrates the health and care system’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions and improving the sustainability of operations that will help to improve health and care for people now, and in the future.

Why is a Green Plan important?

Climate change presents a profound and growing threat to people’s health. Taking action to reduce harmful carbon emissions will save lives and improve health now, and for future generations. As one of the top ten largest employers in the world, contributing almost 5% of UK carbon emissions, the NHS has a real opportunity, responsibility, and interest in tackling this threat head on.

Building a sustainable Green Plan for Norfolk and Waveney

The first three-year phase of the ICS Green Plan has been developed with National Greener NHS guidance, with a focus on coordinating and enabling health and care providers and commissioners to assess their Net Zero maturity and outlining plans to reduce carbon emissions over directly commissioned health and care services.

During this initial phase, ICS partners will continue working with wider ICS partners across local government and the voluntary sector to gather and understand those organisations’ green plans and incorporate them into a full system-level plan to be published after 2025.

The focus areas of the ICS Green Plan

In Norfolk and Waveney, ICS health and care partners are committed to working together to meet the targets outlined in the 2022-2025 Green Plan, sharing best practice and innovation, and holding each other to account. Key areas of carbon emissions have been identified, and ICS partners are collectively taking responsibility for planning and delivering programmes that will reduce emissions, improve efficiencies, and support the sustainable delivery of health services.

The areas focussing on carbon reduction include:

• Medicines, medical equipment, and other areas of the supply chain such as construction and freight, and food and catering
• The carbon footprint from our buildings and materials
• Personal travel (including patient and staff travel, as well as visitors)
• Commissioned health and care services

Working together to achieve Net Zero

The Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board is now a part of the Norfolk Climate Change Partnership, which will help ensure that the ICS’s Green Plan is aligned to similar work that is being carried out across local government, and which will provide additional opportunities for collaboration with local partners.

Steven Course, Director of Finance at NHS Norfolk and Waveney and ICS Executive Lead for Net Zero, said: “We are delighted to be publishing the Green Plan for our health and care system. This system-wide plan sits alongside the Green Plans that each member organisation is working towards, demonstrating our system-wide commitment to achieving Net Zero.

Norfolk and Waveney’s Green Plan demonstrates our commitment to innovate and drive change, whether that is in estates, transport, medicines, or care delivery. As a system we are committed to looking at the carbon emissions we can control, and those that we can seek to influence through the strength of our partnerships which are outside of our direct control.

Our Green Plan provides a strategic framework to help us as a system make the improvements that we need to achieve Net Zero, together. And we encourage everyone to get involved – helping to protect our environment is everybody’s business.”

If you want to know more about our Green Plan, download a copy from the ICS website. If you have a great idea or want to raise awareness about examples of great work happening across the ICS to help improve our environment and reduce carbon emissions, please get in touch with the Green Plan Delivery group here.