Accountability for health: a scoping paper for the LGA health commission

This paper for the Local Government Association Health Commission aims to scope the main issues surrounding the accountability of health services in England in the context of the Commission’s terms of reference. These require the Commission to consider, against a background of what is referred to as a ‘new consensus’ about localism, how local councils might work best with National Health Service and other partners to engage local people in decision-making and empower them to hold the health care commissioning and delivery system to account. In this paper, the authors seek to clarify the different ways in which accountability has been understood and expressed in relation to the NHS, and to offer a framework for assessing both current mechanisms and new proposals