THE chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne and health secretary Jeremy Hunt have signed off the "historic" devolution deal that will see Greater Manchester control its entire £6 billion NHS budget.

The Bolton News reported on Wednesday how council leaders and bosses from clinical commissioning groups, hospitals and NHS providers will agree a new framework for combining health and social care.

Under the "memorandum of understanding", signed today by Mr Osborne, Mr Hunt and Bolton Council leader Cllr Cliff Morris, a new shadow health and social care strategic partnership body will be formed in April, to start work on the deal.

In addition a shadow joint-commissioning body to agree on spending decisions on health across Greater Manchester will be created next month.

Cllr Morris, who is also the lead on health at the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, said the amount of organisations involved in the new deal represents the "scale and importance" of the "unprecedented" agreement.

He added: “This shared plan is essential for the health of residents and citizens across Greater Manchester.

“It is about improving people’s lives, in this case moving from being one of the places where people have the worst health outcomes to one of the best.

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

“This is about people more than pounds. It puts Greater Manchester in the driving seat for deciding on health and care services that suit local need, rather than a ‘one size fits all’ national approach.”

By better linking social care — controlled by local authorities like Bolton Council — and health care, run by the NHS, it is hoped the new deal will see patients given a more "holistic" approach to treatment and mean more people can be treated in the community or at home.

While no concrete details have emerged how the new powers will operate in practice, one of the ideas put forward includes introducing the same IT system across all of the healthcare providers in Greater Manchester.

That would mean that if a patient is receiving treatment from various places and support from the local authorities, each health provider would have access to the same information — and no details would be lost between conflicting IT systems.

Mr Osborne said Friday’s deal is the latest move by the government to create a "northern powerhouse", after they announced devolved powers in housing, transport and the skills budget to Greater Manchester in November.

He said: “When I signed the deal with local councils here to devolve more power to Greater Manchester and to create a new elected mayor, I always hoped that a bigger say over healthcare would be part of the package.

“Things have happened even more swiftly than we had all hoped at the time, and now we have a landmark agreement to bring the local NHS and social care much more closely together.

“This is just the start of the journey.”