Associate Director of Place Delivery & Integration

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL) provides integrated healthcare to a third of London’s population and surrounding areas.

The Trust engages service users, carers, staff and partner organisations in shaping its services and is committed to equality, diversity and inclusion.

• Associate Director of Place Delivery & Integration
• NHS Af C: Band 8d

Job Ref: 333-G-HC-1629 | Site: South 2, Civic Centre Town Uxbridge | Salary: £100,493 – £114,951 per annum (pro rata if part‑time) | Closing Today at 23:59

Contract: Permanent, hours: 37.5 per week (Hybrid working) | Main area: Administrative Grade, NHS Af C: Band 8d | Full time, Flexible working.

Job overview

Hillingdon Place is establishing a Place Integrator Team to protect and improve delivery capability, organisational memory and system coordination.

The Associate Director will support the Place Managing Director, providing whole‑system delivery leadership, executive coordination, governance support, performance grip, escalation and partnership management across Hillingdon’s Place programme.

The role is central to maintaining momentum across neighbourhoods, reactive care, discharge, specialist mental health, hospital‑to‑community transformation and the new hospital redevelopment trajectory.

Main duties of the job

The postholder will work at senior level across Hillingdon Health and Care Partners to translate agreed Place priorities into practical delivery, ensuring that responsibilities, risks, dependencies, milestones and escalations are clear across partners.

The role will maintain a shared view of delivery progress and performance, line manage the BI Lead and Light‑touch Delivery/PMO Lead, and ensure that analytical insight, programme controls and escalation routes operate as a coherent Place integrator function.

It will ensure that issues which cannot be resolved within individual programmes or organisations are surfaced and progressed through the appropriate Place, partner or system route.

This is not an operational director role and does not directly manage provider services.

Its value lies in integration, coordination, grip, assurance, senior deputising capacity and the ability to secure executive follow‑through across organisational boundaries.

• Detailed job description and main responsibilities
• Senior Place integration and delivery leadership
• Act as senior integrator and principal delivery support to the Place MD across agreed Hillingdon Place priorities.
• Deputise for the Place MD in their absence, representing Place in agreed forums, maintaining continuity of senior decision support and ensuring urgent issues are escalated appropriately within delegated authority.
• Provide cross‑system leadership to maintain delivery grip across neighbourhoods, reactive care, discharge, specialist mental health and agreed hospital‑to‑community transformation priorities.
• Turn strategic intent and Board decisions into clear delivery actions, ownership, milestones and escalation routes.
• Work with partners to maintain alignment between local Place priorities, W&NL ICB requirements, the London Neighbourhood Health framework and the Hillingdon new hospital redevelopment trajectory.
• Protect continuity of delivery and organisational memory during transition from the former Borough Team arrangements.
• Executive coordination and partnership management
• Coordinate executive follow‑through across Place partners, ensuring that agreed actions are progressed and barriers are surfaced rapidly.
• Build and maintain senior relationships across NHS providers, local authority, primary care, VCSE, ICB teams and wider system partners.
• Broker solutions where issues sit between organisational boundaries, using influence and structured escalation rather than direct line authority.
• Support the Place MD in preparing for, following up and assuring key discussions with partner executives and system leaders.
• Represent and speak on behalf of the Place MD in agreed meetings and system discussions when required, ensuring the Place position is clear, consistent and aligned with agreed governance.
• Promote a culture of shared ownership, transparency, delivery discipline and constructive challenge across the partnership.
• Performance grip, assurance and benefits realisation
• Work with the BI Lead to maintain a shared understanding of pathway performance, outcomes, risks and benefits across Place priorities.
• Use data and operational intelligence to identify delivery risks, unwarranted variation, emerging pressures and opportunities for improvement.
• Ensure that benefits realisation arrangements are proportionate, credible and linked to agreed Place outcomes, including urgent and emergency care, discharge, neighbourhood delivery and hospital redevelopment assumptions.
• Prepare concise, evidence‑based assurance products for Place governance, partner boards and system forums.
• Ensure that performance concerns are translated into practical recovery actions with named owners and timescales.
• Governance, risk and escalation
• Support effective operation of Place governance, including agenda shaping, action discipline, risk escalation and decision follow‑through.
• Oversee the Place delivery risk and dependency picture, ensuring that material issues are escalated at the right level and not left within individual organisational silos.
• Work with the PMO Lead to maintain proportionate programme controls, delivery plans, milestone reporting and action tracking.
• Ensure that decisions requiring partner approval, formal governance or financial sign‑off are routed appropriately and supported by clear evidence.
• Maintain clear boundaries between Place integration, provider operational management and statutory organisational accountability.
• Transformation and programme delivery
• Provide senior delivery oversight across agreed Place transformation programmes, ensuring that workstreams are coherent, sequenced and aligned to the operating model.
• Support SROs and workstream leads to unblock delivery barriers, clarify dependencies and maintain pace.
• Ensure that transformation priorities are connected to the integrated operating model, including neighbourhoods, reactive care and specialist pathways.
• Contribute to development of investment cases, delivery propositions and partner‑backed funding or hosting arrangements where required.
• Support mobilisation of new arrangements, handovers and implementation plans following partner decisions.
• People, leadership and management
• Line manage the BI Lead and PMO Lead, ensuring clear objectives, supervision, appraisal, workload prioritisation and professional development in line with host organisation policy.
• Operate as a senior role model for collaborative system leadership, maintaining credibility with clinical, operational, corporate and executive colleagues.
• Support development of a high‑performing, inclusive and delivery‑focused Place team culture.
• Provide matrix leadership to wider Place integrator, programme and delivery support capacity as agreed through the host organisation and Place governance, ensuring clarity of role, purpose, priorities and reporting routes.
• Comply with host organisation policies on people management, appraisal, supervision, health and safety, information governance and equality, diversity and inclusion.
• Role boundaries and decision‑making parameters
• The postholder will not directly manage provider services, replace provider operational directors or hold statutory organisational accountability on behalf of partner organisations.
• The role will not duplicate the technical BI function, finance and contracting leadership or provider PMO structures.

It will line manage the BI Lead and PMO Lead to ensure these functions operate coherently within the Place integrator model while preserving their technical/professional responsibilities.

• The postholder will operate through influence, coordination, agreed governance, escalation and executive follow‑through.

Any delegated decision‑making authority will be defined by the host organisation and Place governance arrangements.

• Financial and resource responsibilities
• Contribute to delivery of Place programmes within agreed resource envelopes and governance arrangements.
• Work with finance and contracting colleagues to ensure that delivery proposals, investment cases and benefits assumptions are coherent and appropriately evidenced.
• Monitor risks to delivery value, affordability and benefits realisation, escalating material concerns through agreed governance routes.
• The postholder may hold delegated budget responsibility only where explicitly agreed by the host organisation.
• Information governance, quality and equality
• Ensure all work complies with host organisation and partner requirements for information governance, confidentiality, data protection and records management.
• Use data responsibly to support service improvement, assurance and population health management.
• Promote equality, diversity, inclusion and health equity in all aspects of Place delivery and partnership working.
• Ensure that plans and reports consider the impact of proposals on residents, staff, inequalities, quality, safety and experience.

Person specification

Qualifications

• Educated to master’s level or equivalent senior management experience in health, care, public sector or partnership delivery.
• Relevant management, project/programme, improvement, finance, commissioning or system leadership qualification.

Experience

• Substantial senior management experience in a complex health, care, local government or public sector partnership environment, including working directly with executive leaders and deputising for senior accountable leaders where required.
• Proven experience of leading cross‑organisational delivery without relying solely on direct line management authority.
• Experience of maintaining delivery grip across multiple programmes, including risks, dependencies, milestones, escalation and benefits realisation.
• Experience of producing Board‑level assurance, decision papers, recovery plans and senior briefing materials.
• Experience working in an integrated care system, place‑based partnership, provider collaborative or equivalent multi‑agency partnership.
• Experience supporting new operating model implementation, organisational transition or major service transformation.
• Experience working across neighbourhood, urgent care, discharge, mental health, community, primary care or hospital‑to‑community transformation programmes.
• Experience of working directly with executive directors, clinical leaders, local authority senior officers and elected/system stakeholders.
• Delivery and performance
• Able to translate strategic aims into practical delivery plans, action ownership, milestones and escalation routes.
• Strong analytical judgement: able to interpret data, identify delivery risks and convert insight into action.
• Experience using population health, operational flow or pathway dashboards to drive improvement.
• Familiarity with tools such as Optica, WSIC, UCP, EPR‑derived dashboards or equivalent intelligence platforms.
• Governance and risk
• Strong understanding of governance, risk management, assurance, delegated authority and decision‑making in complex public sector partnerships.
• Experience preparing or supporting formal governance reports for NHS, local authority or partnership boards.
• Communication
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to produce concise, politically astute and evidence‑based senior reports.
• Experience presenting to partnership boards, committees, executive groups or external system forums.
• People and matrix leadership
• Able to provide visible senior leadership, direct line management of BI and PMO functions, and matrix leadership to teams working across organisational boundaries.
• Experience developing small delivery teams, integrator functions, BI/analytics interfaces or PMO functions.
• System leadership and partnership working
• Able to build trust and credibility quickly across organisational, professional and sector boundaries, including acting as a credible deputy for the Place MD in senior partnership forums.
• Skilled in influencing, negotiating and brokering solutions where accountability, funding or operational ownership is contested or shared.
• Existing knowledge of Hillingdon Place, NW London/W&NL system arrangements or comparable London IC S context.
• Experience of partnership governance, alliance arrangements, lead provider/integrator models.
• Values and behaviours
• Collaborative, constructive and delivery‑focused; able to maintain grip while working respectfully with partner sovereignty and statutory accountabilities.
• Resilient under pressure, comfortable with ambiguity and able to manage competing priorities in a high‑profile environment.
• Demonstrates commitment to reducing inequalities and improving outcomes for residents.
• Experience working through periods of organisational change, restructuring or transition.
• Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI can be used as a support tool, not a replacement for the applicant’s own work.

Applications must remain personal, accurate and reflective of the candidate’s real experience.

AI‑generated content must not misrepresent skills, qualifications or experience.

Over reliance on AI‑generated content is discouraged and may diminish the applicant's chances of success.

Please note that the use of Artificial Intelligence is prohibited during the interview process.

Vaccination and welfare

The successful applicant may have contact with patients or service users.

As an NHS Trust we strongly encourage and support vaccination as this remains the best way to protect yourself, your family, your colleagues and patients when working in our healthcare settings.

• Additional information
• Due to the high response levels we receive for some vacancies, we may expire any of them prior to the advertised closing date and advise you to submit your application as soon as possible.
• Applications from job seekers who require sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications.

Before submitting your application and to avoid disappointment please check that you are eligible under the UKVI points‑based system.

• Our Agenda for Change employment contracts are subject to a contractual 13‑week probationary period.
• If you are offered a job, information will be transferred into the national NHS Electronic Staff Records system.
• Employer certification / accreditation badges

The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.

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