Greater Manchester Rejects Palantir NHS Platform, Fueling UK Debate

A Lone Holdout Challenges National Strategy

The UK government faces a critical decision in February 2026: whether to terminate a contract worth over $400 million between the National Health Service and Palantir Technologies. At the center of the debate is Greater Manchester, the only integrated care board in England that has categorically refused to adopt Palantir's Federated Data Platform (FDP), instead maintaining its own homegrown system.

Greater Manchester ICB, serving roughly 3 million people, has repeatedly concluded that its Analytics and Data Science Platform (ADSP) exceeds what Palantir currently offers. At a May 2025 meeting, the board determined that some of its platform's functionalities are "two–three years" ahead of the FDP, according to details first reported by WIRED.

Why it matters

This regional resistance has become a focal point in a national conversation about technological sovereignty, vendor dependence, and the role of American companies in critical public infrastructure. With European nations increasingly wary of US tech dependencies amid geopolitical tensions, Greater Manchester's stance offers a concrete test case for whether domestic alternatives can match or exceed solutions from Silicon Valley giants.

Competing Claims About Platform Capabilities

Palantir was commissioned in 2023 to build a federated data platform that could organize health data across England's fragmented care system. The company and NHS England report the system is already reducing wait times and hospital stays while optimizing operating theater usage. As of now, 139 of roughly 200 hospital trusts and 35 of 36 integrated care boards are actively using the technology.

Matt Hennessey, chief data and analytics officer at NHS Greater Manchester, argues the ADSP provides advantages Palantir cannot match. The homegrown platform incorporates primary care data unavailable on the FDP and can be reconfigured more easily because it's built from modular components. "If we were to fully adopt the FDP … it would be a retrograde step," Hennessey told WIRED.

Palantir disputes these claims. Stephen Childs, head of health care partnerships at Palantir UK, says there is "scant independent evidence" that the ADSP has directly improved patient care or saved costs, while thousands of NHS staff actively use and endorse the FDP.

Political and Trust Dimensions

The technical debate has become entangled with broader concerns about Palantir's values and political associations. In June 2025, a bipartisan group of UK politicians published a report calling the reliance on Palantir an "unacceptable point of weakness" and recommended activating the contract's break clause. A separate parliamentary committee echoed these concerns, citing Greater Manchester as proof that alternatives exist.

Hennessey emphasizes that public trust is fundamental to any health data platform's success. Greater Manchester ICB acknowledged in April that it had not begun a scheduled review of its FDP decision "because it's clear that the public concerns have heightened rather than diminished."

Defenders of the Palantir contract argue that no viable alternative exists capable of integrating data across the entire NHS infrastructure. Tom Bartlett, an independent IT consultant who previously oversaw the national FDP rollout, warns that terminating the contract would force some trusts to revert to paper-based systems.

The details were first reported by WIRED.