Head of Commercial

The team has responsibility for all NHS England commercial activity for 3rd party spend, across all areas of the commercial lifecycle including Market Management, Commercial Strategy, Procurement, Contract Management, and Strategic Supplier Relationship Management. The scale of the team is significant with responsibility for over 4,400 live contracts with a total lifetime value of over £14bn and a pipeline of over 2,000 procurements with estimated values of over £11bn. This is one of the largest and most complex commercial portfolios across government and gives colleagues the opportunity to work on high value and high complexity commercial delivery that has a direct and positive impact on patient care.

The Commercial Partnering and Solutions Team exists to support the new NHS England Directorates with their commercial requirements and to lead on establishing the commercial strategy for significant commercial projects.

Our Team Objectives Are:

• To be the Directorate business partner at all levels.
• To develop a cohesive commercial pipeline to ensure the delivery teams have a forward plan of demand.
• To develop the commercial strategy and solution and help the delivery teams deliver against the requirements.
• To be solution driven and find the right solutions that create the best chance of delivering the business objectives.

The Head of Commercial – Partnering and Solutions (Clinical) will play a senior leadership role to business partner with Directorates and support the development of commercial pipelines to aid business planning. They will also have specific commercial accountabilities, often for NHS England’s highest-impact commercial arrangements in terms of criticality, reputational risk, and value and will therefore need to proactively drive commercial input and ensure best industry practice, added value, and reduce risks.

This role sits in a newly established Clinical Partnering and Solutions Team, so as a senior manager you will be supporting the set up of processes and procedures, as well as embedding the new ways of working with commercial across NHS England and providing support to Directorates on their commercial activity.

This role is for someone with significant procurement and commercial experience, strong strategic outlook, and excellent leadership attributes who is looking to apply themselves at the higher levels of commercial delivery and accountability on complex commercial arrangements.

The role requires experience of operating with a diverse group of senior stakeholders and effective and extensive stakeholder engagement skills to gain credibility quickly; understanding and digesting complex and detailed information in order to offer advice and expertise. You must have high-level engagement experience that is likely to result in successfully influencing outcomes.

The NHS England Board Have Set Out The Top-level Purpose For The New Organisation:
To lead the NHS in England to deliver high-quality services for all, which will inform the detailed design work and we will achieve this purpose by:

• Enabling local systems and providers to improve the health of their people and patients and reduce health inequalities.
• Making the NHS a great place to work, where our people can make a difference and achieve their potential.
• Working collaboratively to ensure our healthcare workforce has the right knowledge, skills, values, and behaviours to deliver accessible, compassionate care.
• Optimising the use of digital technology, research, and innovation.
• Delivering value for money.

If you would like to know more or require further information, please visit NHS England.

Colleagues with a contractual office base are expected to spend, on average, at least 40% of their time working in-person.

Staff recruited from outside the NHS will usually be appointed at the bottom of the pay band.

NHS England holds a Sponsor Licence; this means that we may be able to sponsor you providing the Home Office requirements are met. To be eligible for sponsorship through the Skilled Worker route, you’ll usually need to be paid the ‘standard’ salary rate of at least £38,700 per year, or the ‘going rate’ for your job, whichever is higher. You can find more information on the Government website.

For further details / informal visits contact: Name: Kate Cassidy Job title: Head of Commercial Email address: Kate.cassidy2@nhs.net