Dear Candidate

Thank you for your interest in University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust and this fabulous opportunity to join our Board as an Associate Non-Executive Director. I hope that you enjoy finding out more about our Trust, our values, ambitions and how your professional and personal experience could offer a fresh perspective to the decision making of our Board.

We are by any measure a large and complex organisation and are one of the country’s largest University Hospitals.  We have an annual income of c£840m and over 11,000 dedicated staff operating across two busy acute sites at Royal Stoke University Hospital and the County Hospital at Stafford.  We provide a wide range of acute and specialist healthcare services to our local populations in Staffordshire, South Cheshire and Shropshire and are also a Major Trauma Centre for a wider population of 3 million people stretching from Anglesey to the Peak District. 

I have been proud to Chair the Trust for almost five years and remain inspired by the commitment and compassion of our staff who responded with resilience and professionalism to the pressure and demand of delivering care and supporting colleagues, particularly over the last two years. Recovering from the wider impact of the pandemic on both our staff and patients is an ongoing priority, for us and our partners in the Staffordshire and Stoke Integrated Care System. Our system wide programme to improve our population’s health is a key area of focus in our transformation.  We have made significant progress in tackling significant financial and operational challenges and have in a place a programme of ‘Improving Together’; which will embed quality improvement as a fundamental part of our culture

The Board has developed as a highly collaborative, effective, and cohesive unit.  However, I am keen to bring broader and more diverse voices to the team.  We recognise the need to ensure that at a strategic level our decision making is inclusive and enhanced by reflecting the diversity within both our staff and populations.

We are seeking a new Associate Non-Executive Director to join our Board who is focused on putting patients and staff at the heart of all our strategic decisions. We are keen to hear from people with transferable leadership experience from either the private or public sector, who are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion and bring experience of leading cultural change in person-centred environments.  This is a great opportunity to influence transformation across our organisation and system, to proudly improve services for our communities. From a succession planning perspective individuals with a professional background in finance and an accountancy qualification would be of particularly relevant interest however this is not essential.

I am particularly keen to encourage applications from people from Black Asian and Minority Ethnic communities to provide a fresh perspective to our strategic decision making and ensure that our Board represents the communities which it serves.  You do not need any experience from within healthcare, as long as you bring a passion for our work, a strong understanding of good governance and positive energy to challenge and support our Board and help us to continue our journey of improvement.   

If you are interested in this exciting opportunity, then I do encourage you to read further on this site and contact our retained consultants at GatenbySanderson in the first instance for a confidential discussion; Russell Brandon, Julia St Clare or Emma Pick up of GatenbySanderson on 07807 631564.

I look forward to meeting you during the process.

David Wakefield, Chairman