TOWN hall leaders and health bosses have welcomed plans to give Greater Manchester control of its entire NHS budget — worth £6 billion.

The agreement will see more powers given to Bolton Council and Bolton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to link health services and social care, recognising the link between physical, mental and social wellbeing.

Leader of Bolton Council, Cllr Cliff Morris, will help lead the charge for the new partnership between the 10 local authorities, 12 CCGs, 14 NHS providers, NHS England and the government, as the current Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) lead on health.

He said: “Our ambition is clear – to move from being one of the places with the worst health outcomes in the country to becoming one of the best, and we believe this could be a huge step towards that goal.

“By fully integrating health and social care we can focus on preventing illness and promoting well-being across all ages.”

It is understood from April, 2016, Chancellor George Osborne will devolve the entire NHS budget — money to be spent on public health, social care, GP and hospital services and mental health — to local leaders, the first time it has been done. Details of a new board to oversee how the budget is spent have yet to be confirmed.

In a statement Mr Osborne said: "We're discussing a plan for bringing together the NHS and social care in Manchester so we provide better care for patients.

"It's early days, but I think it's a really exciting development. We'll be working hard now with Greater Manchester and NHS England on getting the details right so the arrangements work best for patients."

Under the current arrangement, delivery of health care and social services is provided by different bodies — leading critics to say the current service is fragmented and doesn’t give patients the best results.

Bolton Council oversees adult and children’s social care, and public health; Bolton CCG – with a board made up of clinicians — buys services for the Royal Bolton Hospital and oversees GP practices, while the whole budget is mostly overseen by NHS England at the moment.

By integrating or linking social care and health care more closely, it is hoped doctors will be able to look at the whole needs of the person, to make sure they receive the right treatment and support to get better.

Chairman of the Bolton CCG Dr Wirin Bhatiani welcomed the announcement which he said would give Bolton residents more transparency and lead to greater accountability of who is deciding how health services are run in the borough.

He said: “This is about a real desire to deliver better health outcomes for our population.

“We are in a better position to understand what our Greater Manchester needs are, it gives us more flexibility and increases the opportunities to look at our resources as a whole.

“There is concern this will lead to another layer of bureaucracy — this is not the aim of the CCG and local authorities.

“While it is valuable to work together with Greater Manchester, we don’t want to create a Greater Manchester bureaucracy.

“The CCGs are clinically led and this approach is already paying dividends — we must make sure that the clinical voice is heard, and we want to ensure that we are around the table.”

This latest announcement follows Mr Osborne’s devolution deal back in November, which agreed that in exchange for a directly-elected Mayor, Greater Manchester would get more control over its transport, housing and skills budget, and more power to integrate health and social care.

Cllr Linda Thomas, deputy leader of Bolton Council, said the plans to give the region control of its entire NHS budget had come ‘completely out of the blue’.

She said: “Since 2010 I’ve been pushing at the Local Government Association for more powers over health locally.

“The idea is it will help us deliver integration better, if we have the whole pot of money.

“Commissioning has been so fragmented, it’s unreal. Fundamentally accountability will be with whoever holds the purse strings.

“The question now is whether central government will give us sufficient resources to deliver this, and whether or not in a few years we find they have shortchanged us.

“If it works, it is going to make a seamless and better patient experience.

“We will be the experiment that everyone is watching, and it is incumbent on us to get it right.”