Our Impact
Our impact
By participating in our surveys, you provide Healthwatch Cambridgeshire and Peterborough with vital insights that drive real change in local health and social care services. Every experience you share helps us understand what’s working well, where improvements are needed, and where services can be more accessible, inclusive, and responsive to the needs of our community. Your feedback doesn’t just inform us, it helps shape decisions that affect thousands of lives.
Our reports
Supporting You Every Step of the Way
Our team directly assisted 156 individuals with additional information and signposting support during this period, providing advice and guidance to help them navigate health and social care services.
Whether helping someone find the right service, explaining their options, or supporting a complaint, we are committed to ensuring every person knows their rights and can access the care they need.
Your feedback
Engaging With Our Community
Our Engagement Team attended 191 events, gathering feedback from 1,376 people across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. Highlights included sessions at Staploe Medical Centre and several Women’s Health Events in Peterborough, where we connected directly with the community to hear their experiences and concerns.
Influencing Change Locally and Nationally
At Healthwatch Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, we’ve been proud to turn people’s experiences into actions that influence service design and public policy. For example, we recently worked with local residents, the Police and Crime Commissioner and Cambridgeshire Constabulary to feed back on policing approaches for people with autism and other neurodiverse conditions, helping shape training and practice locally.
On national health policy, patient feedback collected through us and Healthwatch England contributed to the government’s changes to the GP contract, ensuring patients’ challenges in accessing appointments and digital services were heard at the highest level. We’re also highlighting systemic pressures in urgent care, such as long waits and corridor care in A&E, by bringing people’s real experiences to light and calling for safer, more dignified care settings.
Additionally, we’re feeding local insight into national consultations like the Department of Health and Social Care’s proposals for NHS Online, making sure new digital services work for everyone and have conducted exploratory reports on the local use of the NHS App.
The Annual Mental Health Summit 2025 brought together over 200 attendees, including patients and health leaders, to celebrate achievements, explore challenges, and discuss priorities for improving mental health services locally. The full summit report is available here.
Our Community Diagnostic Centres Report shared patient experiences from Ely and Wisbech, highlighting faster access, high-quality facilities, and caring staff, while also identifying areas for improvement such as clearer communication and transport information. These findings are informing the planned Peterborough CDC.
The Youthwatch Podcast: Teens Talk Vaping is being used to support informed conversations among teens, parents, and the wider community.
Our Young People’s Mental Health Report identified the impact of delays and poor transitions on mental health, providing recommendations for local providers to improve access, coordination, and communication.
Between March 2025 and February 2026, community feedback highlighted both strengths and areas for improvement across health and care services. Hospital and community health services received generally mixed experiences, while social care and patient transport were flagged as areas needing closer attention.
Feedback also pointed to challenges in public health and environmental aspects of care, whereas positive experiences were more common around staff behaviours and treatment quality. Provider-specific insights showed variation in satisfaction, with dental services and certain NHS trusts receiving the most critical feedback. Overall, the insights help us pinpoint where services are performing well and where further improvements are needed to enhance patient experience across the county.
Key takeaways:
- Social care, patient transport, and public health remain priority areas for improvement.
- Staff behaviours and treatment quality are commonly highlighted as strengths.
- Provider-specific feedback identifies where targeted changes could make the most impact
1,230,000
people in England accessed Healthwatch advice and information online, by phone or face-to-face (2024-2025).