Non-Executive Director

Job overview

Thank you for your interest in joining South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SCAS) as a Non-Executive Director.

SCAS provides a range of emergency, urgent and non-urgent patient care to the populations of Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Hampshire as well as providing non-emergency patient transport services across Surrey and Sussex.  We employ 4,700 staff, who, along with our 900 volunteers enable us to deliver care 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

The NHS is operating in very challenging circumstances with demand often outstripping capacity and SCAS is no exception to this.  Our 999, 111 and Clinical Co-ordination Centres have, and continue to respond to challenges that we have not seen previously but are becoming more commonplace.  Resultantly, high levels of resilience from our people and our board have been required, for a sustained period.

Against this backdrop, we continue to maintain focus as a board on delivering the best quality care we can to our populations, ensuring that we can respond in the timeliest manner, and that we do this within our budget.  We can only do this by working closely with our system partners across the wider NHS and the voluntary sector, which will also help us to realise our strategic ambition to become a Care Navigator across the system, ensuring that patients receive the right care, in the right setting, at the right time.

Main duties of the job

We are looking to recruit 2 Non-Executive Directors to replace current postholders who are approaching the end of their tenure on our board, with a view to starting in post in July of this year, to ensure that we maintain continuity.

In addition to broad leadership skills, I am seeking a Non-Executive Director with strong financial skills and experience, preferably gained in a large, complex organisation and a Non-Executive Director with skills in organisational change and development given the challenges that lie ahead.

You will need to be a strong strategic thinker who understands the challenges of operating in a Unitary board, who is also able to constructively challenge the executive team in a pressurised and fast paced environment, without becoming involved in operational issues.  You will also need to be politically astute, have a high degree of personal integrity and be aligned to our organisational values and those of the NHS.

We want our Board to have the breadth of experience and are keen to attract candidates who bring diverse perspectives.  We welcome expressions of interest from a wide range of backgrounds and particularly those who are under-represented in the NHS at board level.

To arrange an information conversation about the role please contact Jayne Waller

[email protected]

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Following the move to establish a single Strategic Commissioner for Ambulance Services in the South East Region, the boards of SCAS and South East Coast Ambulance Services have agreed to work together in collaboration to jointly address some of these challenges and ensure that a consistent and efficient service is operated across our region.  The boards also agreed to form a Group Model under the leadership of a Joint Chair and Joint Chief Executive Officer, which is a first for the Ambulance Service.

Although we will be moving towards establishing the governance and organisational structures we will need to operate as a Group, we will remain 2 separate statutory organisations.  We therefore need to maintain a strong Unitary board to lead SCAS, with the skills that we need to drive the collaboration forward and ensure that we continue to focus on delivering the best quality care to our population, meet our financial duties and deliver best value to the taxpayer.Please refer to the attached Job Description and Person Specification for full details on this role.