Dear Colleague,
I am writing to update you on our plans for 2020, 2021 and 2022 and to seek your views on those plans.
As you may know, Ministers have agreed the suspension of the 2020 national Clinical Excellence Awards round. We will be extending the awards of those due to renew in 2020 by one year, subject to due diligence (please refer to our website for details here. These award holders would now be expected to apply to renew their awards in the 2021 competition and, if successful, would then be recommended for a four-year renewal.
Subject to Ministerial agreement, we don’t think it would be practical now to restart the 2020 competition. So, again, subject to confirmation and to ongoing monitoring of COVID-related pressures, we plan to hold an extended 2021 competition, with a lengthened timetable.
We recognise that, as a result of the above, there will be twice as many renewal applications due in 2021 and that there is likely to be an increase in new applications, with the associated additional burden for employers, national nominating bodies and specialist societies and ACCEA itself. To mitigate this, we plan to open an extended application window in November 2020 and close it at the end of January 2021. There will be significantly more work for our scoring sub-committees, so the scoring timetable would also be extended. We will look to boost recruitment of scorers and any help you can provide in this activity would be welcome.
Finally, due to the COVID crisis, the new (revised) scheme is now not expected to be in place until 2022, which matches the also-delayed local CEA reform timeline. We plan to consult on this new scheme for three months over the autumn of 2020.
We are mindful that the next year will continue to be challenging for the NHS and so I hope that you find this update helpful. I would be happy to hear any questions, comments or concerns you may have.
Yours faithfully,
ACCEA Secretariat
