A general account of the company’s activities in the financial year to which the report relates, including a description of how we have benefited the community. Introduction Through the last 18 months, peoplehub has focused on revising and relaunching the Spectrum of Participation, as well as working to promote the understanding and use of the Spectrum across the health and care system. We’ve responded to the Government’s proposed personal health budget expansion within the 10 Year Plan for Health for England. Finally, after much deliberation, we have concluded that peoplehub has achieved all that it can as a Community Interest Company under its original purpose, and will therefore be dissolving. The Spectrum of Participation In June 2025 we revised the Spectrum of Participation graphics in direct response to feedback from people using the Spectrum. The red colour in “Inform” was changed to pink, because of the perceived connotations of the colour red with danger and stop. We also made the text on the Spectrum easier to read by switching from white text on a coloured background to black text on a white background within the coloured sections of the graphics. To accompany the launch of the revised Spectrum, we wrote a new paper – “The Spectrum of Participation Explained – Why all involvement is not co-production - and that’s a good thing!” This paper summarises why a new image is necessary to replace the historic ladder images so often used to describe co-production. We also created a table called “Common Obstacles Resolved”. This table describes how the Spectrum resolves some of the common challenges experienced with the ladder co-production images. One of our objectives in creating the Spectrum was to replace the historic ladders images in common use. Therefore, on launching the revised Spectrum, we compiled a comprehensive list of organisations which we thought might find the Spectrum a useful tool to work with. We successfully made contact with 475 people and organisations and received some very positive feedback and thanks for introducing them to the Spectrum. In July 2025, as a result of our promotional work, we were contacted by Professor Jon Glasby at Birmingham University to request to reproduce the Spectrum of Participation in the fourth edition of his book “Understanding Health and Social Care”. We are delighted to share that the Spectrum features in this latest edition which was published by Policy Press on the 24th March 2026. This is particularly exciting, because inclusion in this key text means that the Spectrum will reach future generations of health and social care students. 1 The Spectrum continues to prove a useful tool to support clarification and identification of the different ways that organisations and systems can work with people with lived experience. Use of the Spectrum is becoming more and more widespread across a range of organisations including universities, local authorities and NHS England. 10 Year Plan for Health for England In July 2025, the Government published “Fit for the Future - 10 Year Health Plan for England”. In the Plan, the Government set out the ambition to “at least double the number of people offered a Personal Health Budget by 2028 to 2029, offer 1 million people a Personal Health Budget by 2030, and ensure it is a universal offer for all who would benefit by 2035.” The Government intends that the expansion of personal health budget numbers will deliver a shift of power and control closer to people, on a vast scale. Peoplehub is concerned that without due oversight and a careful focus on quality, the proposed expansion risks turning that intended shift of power and control into a token offer that will deliver no real benefit to people. This will not only mean that the Government will fail to deliver on their intended impact, but that true choice and control will be further eroded from the lives of people with the most complex health and care needs. Working with our Core Group, we created a careful response to the plans for personal health budget numbers, which we published in November 2025. In our response, we explored the contrast between policy intent, the experiences and evidence from the 2012 personal health budget pilot evaluation, and people’s current experiences of personal health budgets. We stated our concerns that the Government’s proposed expansion of personal health budget numbers will further dilute the quality, and therefore success, of personal health budgets. Our response outlined the essential steps that must be taken, including that the Government must evaluate the quality of personal health budgets, and work to improve the experiences of budget holders. Peoplehub believes this is the only way to ensure that personal health budgets remain a meaningful tool to improve people’s health outcomes and quality of life, and a sincere means of supporting more people to become active partners in their care. Facebook Group Through the summer of 2025, we became increasingly aware of the growing level of organisational responsibilities for all content posted in our Facebook group. Our Facebook group provided a platform for people with lived experience to access peer support about personal health budgets. The group had more than doubled in size since 2020 to 849 members, with an average of 21 new posts a month. On several occasions through the summer, we had to intervene in group discussions within the peoplehub Facebook group to protect the digital safety and safeguarding of group members. After much reflection and deliberation, we concluded that we could no longer commit to the time required to safely run our Facebook group. With our Core Group, we explored a number of potential options for continuation of the Facebook 2 group, however it was concluded that the best course of action would be to close the Group down. Members were given a month’s notice, and alternative sources of peer support on Facebook were suggested. The peoplehub Facebook group was archived on 31st August 2025, and permanently deleted on 30th November 2025. This closure concludes 13 years of successful provision of a peer support platform for people exploring personal health budget options, and sharing their own knowledge, wisdom and experience with each other. We are grateful to all the group members for their contributions and support to each other throughout this time, which is what made the group so successful. Organisational Closure In February 2026, we commissioned Steph Carson of Darley Consulting to support us to think about the future for peoplehub and its purpose, together with considering the current co-director’s own priorities in their lives. This process came about because of our awareness of an incresing gap between our good practice information guides and the real-world experiences of current personal health budgets. We have spent time with our Core Group in the last 2 years discussing the pros and cons of highlighting best practice in our personal health budget guides versus the possibility that our guides could be setting unrealistic expectations for people. This discrepancy between good practice and current quality was further highlighted for us with the NHS 10-year plan being focused solely on increasing numbers. Peoplehub was originally set up to enable people with long-term health conditions and disabilities to have more choice and control over their health and well-being. Personal health budgets were one way of achieving that shift. On reflection, it feels to us now, that the potential for useful change lies more within the promotion and use of the Spectrum of Participation, as a way that people’s voices can influence the direction of policy and practice across many issues affecting the lives of people with long-term health conditions and disabilities. We have therefore concluded, after much deliberation, that peoplehub has achieved all that it can as a Community Interest Company under its original purpose. We are proud of all that peoplehub has achieved, including enabling the effective contribution of people with lived experience to the development and implementation of personal health budgets. The creation and delivery of the original Peer Leadership Academy - a personal development programme to equip people with lived experience with the knowledge, skills and confidence to contribute effectively to strategic co production – was innovative and ground-breaking in 2014. The investment in people with lived experience was crucial to this. The Academy ran seven times, and the success of this led to the evolution of further peer leader development programmes. 3 Demonstrating how well strategic co-production can work within the context of personal health budget policy provided impetus for expansion of the approach across different fields and within different organisations. The creation of the Spectrum of Participation has enabled clarification of the whole range of constructive relationships and interactions that can exist between organisations, systems and people with lived experience. The People Hub Network CIC will dissolve in the Autumn of 2026. The Spectrum of Participation resources will be located on a new specific and independent website to enable their continued uptake and effective application. Conclusion Given the shift over the last few years from quality to quantity of personal health budgets, peoplehub took time to carefully critique the possibilities and the risks associated with the Government’s proposed expansion of numbers. We also provided a set of constructive suggestions for how personal health budgets could retain quality and effectiveness. Our response was informed not only by our Core Group’s direct experiences of deteriorating quality, but also by repeated concerns from our Facebook Group members, and requests for help from individuals facing severe difficulties with the implementation of their personal health budgets. Ultimately, the best method for ensuring quality and improvement lies in co-production of standards which are regularly monitored. The Government promises “to put power in patients’ hands” and put “patient choice, voice and feedback at the heart of how we define and measure quality.” This requires a sound understanding of how to seek and work with people’s experiences and ideas. This means the Spectrum of Participation is more important now than ever, as a tool to enabling effective and meaningful relationships and decision-making. Our work to promote the Spectrum has resulted in further awareness and use of the tool. We are seeing it shared on social media, and know it is being used effectively in several pockets across the health and care system. The Spectrum offers organisations the opportunity to better clarify power in decision-making, in order to more effectively share that power with people with lived experience. We are hopeful that this increasing awareness of power in decision-making will support more power in people’s hands. Done well, this will lead to people with long term health conditions and disabilities having greater control over health and care policy and practice, both nationally and on an individual level

No consultation with stakeholders

£5,400 (2025 - £12,750)

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration