More details have been published about changes to Strategic Health Authorities and the policies and processes of appointing senior staff to the National Commissioning Board.
Strategic Health Authorities
Consultations about the SHA clustering finished at the end of August and SHAs will be clustered from October.
The NHS North of England will be made up of the NHS North West, NHS North East and NHS Yorkshire & Humber SHAs.
Kathryn Riddle, currently Chair of NHS Yorkshire and Humber, has been appointed as Chair of the NHS North of England SHA cluster and Ian Dalton has now been appointed as Chief Executive.
Peter Carr (Chair of NHS North East) and Sally Cheshire (our Chair at NHS North West) are expected to act as Vice Chairs. There will be 9 non executive director posts (NEDs), one Chair and 8 NEDs, including 3 NEDs from each SHA.
There will also be five other executive roles – Chief Executive, Medical Director, Nursing Director, Finance Director and one other. Each local SHA cluster will determine what that fifth role will be.
Other roles and functions such as communications, public health, performance, operations, QIPP, provider and commissioning development will either have their own executive director lead or will fit under another executive director lead.
Ian Dalton, will work on developing draft structures, job descriptions, etc, for the NHS North of England SHA cluster.
All current SHA bases will be kept open as no decision has yet been made as to where the SHA cluster base will be.
The NHS National Commissioning Board’s People Transition Policy (PTP):
The Department of Health published the above policy in July.
It sets out the policies and processes that will guide the first round of appointments to the NHS National Commissioning Board (NHS NCB). It is for phase 1 – ie. senior posts. Once in place, these senior posts will then work to determine the rest of the structures.
Described as essential reading for those who think their future may be with the NHS National Commissioning Board, the PTP covers key information about the appointment process as well as terms and conditions. It is a high level document which gives further information on working for the NHS National Commissioning Board, how transfers and appointments to the NHS National Commissioning Board will be made, what you can expect, how this will affect you, the appointments process and Q&As.
It is a long document at 70+ pages, but the Q&As are very useful.
Key points from the PTP are:
The NHS National Commissioning Board (NCB) will employ approximately 3,500 staff, based at Quarry House in Leeds with a base in London. It is expected, though, that two thirds of the workforce will be based within the ‘field force’.
Any staff working for the NHS NCB will be on NHS terms and conditions (eg. Agenda for Change, VSM, medical or dental).
Some functions, such as patient safety, will transfer to the NHS NCB.
A transitional resourcing team (TRT) has been set up. This team will inform staff of relevant vacancies.
The NHS NCB will have six key functions:
Finance/performance and operations
Commissioning fevelopment
Patient and public rngagement, insights and informatics
Strategy and transformation
Policy and corporate development
Chief of Staff – covering HR and organisational development
There have been some questions about why there are such detailed proposals before the legislation has been passed. This is because the NHS Future Forum recommended that the NHS NCB be set up as soon as possible to ensure focussed leadership during the transition.
The timetable is
August to October – staffing structure for phase one will be finalised
August 18 – start of recruitment to senior and other priority posts (where these are new posts and no transfer)
October 31 – senior staff take up posts
October to December – senior recruitment complete and phase two structures finalised
More information on the People Transition policy is available on the DH website at http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_128699
