Much work continues in NHS England to shape the future of specialised gender identity services. We have convened a Programme Board for Gender Identity Services that I chair.

The Board is responsible for making recommendations to the Specialised Commissioning Oversight Group, and its scope and membership can be found on the gender identity services clinical reference group page. The Board’s independent members were appointed through an open recruitment process.

I’m pleased to announce the publication of the report of the independent analysis of responses to our consultation on proposed service specifications. We had significant interest in the consultation – over 800 respondents, and I want to thank everyone who took part either in writing or by attending one of our events.

We are now in the process of forming the final proposals for the service specifications. The Clinical Reference Group for Gender Identity Services received the report in December, and having considered the report, it submitted its final advice on the specifications to NHS England in March. We are considering the CRG’s advice alongside the independent report and individual consultation submissions, with a view to publishing a final version of the specifications in the Spring of 2018.

The quality of the submissions to consultation was high, and has given us a rich source of ideas and proposals to consider. Alongside the process for finalising the service specifications we are also exploring potential models of care and models of delivery, and I will keep you updated by way of this blog.

I will also share with you over the next few months the process for the national procurement of specialist surgical and non-surgical services that is planned for the summer of 2018. We hosted a market engagement event in March for organisations interested in taking part in the procurement, where we described the emerging ambitions for procurement.

I will write again shortly with another update, but in the meantime I will endeavour to answer your questions via this blog as quickly as I can.

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