Job summary
- Main area
- Directors
- Grade
- ESM1
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time - 37.5 hours per week
- Job ref
- 990-LON-18308-E
- Employer
- NHS England
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- 10 South Colonnade
- Town
- London
- Salary
- £100,000 per annum
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 13/11/2025 23:59
Employer heading
Director of Performance
ESM1
Our Organisation
The NHS is building a culture that is positive, compassionate and inclusive – and we all have our part to play.
As employers we are committed to protecting and promoting the physical and mental health and wellbeing of all our colleagues. This underpins our values as set out in the NHS Constitution and supports us to be an Employer of Choice, while helping our colleagues to deliver high quality services for our patients and communities.
As a flexible employer, we want to support you to work in a way that is best for the NHS, our patients and you. Talk to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that’s a job share, part time, hybrid working or another flexible pattern. In addition, although the role advertised may have a ‘home’ office base indicated, we remain committed to supporting flexibility around workplace locations. If it works for the service, we will do our best to make it work for you.
We are an accredited Living Wage Employer which means that every colleague working for our organisation and third-party contractors will earn a real Living Wage. We are one of over 15,000 organisations, who voluntarily chose to pay the real Living Wage.
Job overview
The Director of Performance is a unique opportunity for an exceptional candidate to improve healthcare and reduce inequalities across London. You will lead how we measure, understand and improve operational performance across the region—turning data into insight and insight into action—so that Londoners experience timely, safe and high‑quality care.
You will lead a large team and be accountable to the Executive Director of Operations, working closely with colleagues across planning, performance, finance and transformation, and partnering with integrated care boards (ICBs), providers and national teams to unlock sustainable improvement at pace.
We’re building a team that reflects the communities we serve. If you’re excited by the role but don’t meet every criterion, we’d still like to hear from you. We write our adverts in clear, neutral language, avoid unnecessary jargon and focus only on what’s essential; flexible working is supported.
Reward (What you can expect)
• Real impact at scale—shape performance and improvement for millions of Londoners.
• Supportive, flexible culture—we welcome flexible working patterns and offer a comprehensive NHS benefits package, including the NHS Pension and generous leave, plus access to staff networks and continuous learning.
• Career stretch and development—work alongside experienced regional and national teams on high profile programmes that develop strategic, analytical and system leadership capability.
Main duties of the job
Responsibilities (the big outcomes you’ll lead)
- Create a single version of the truth for operational performance across London—producing clear, consistent reporting aligned with financial data, and providing deep trend analysis to inform decisions.
- Drive improvement where performance is off‑track—working with systems and providers on actions that recover urgent & emergency care and elective standards, and evidencing impact.
- Lead on data & analytics for performance—partnering with planning and performance information teams to ensure robust insight and intelligent use of data.
- Strengthen resilience & oversight—lead winter capacity planning; support rollout of regional regulatory policy and quality assurance with partner bodies.
- Build system partnerships—develop effective relationships with ICBs, providers, regional directors and national teams (Finance, Planning & Performance), and collaborate with arm’s‑length bodies such as CQC and NICE.
Working for our organisation
Our work supports the NHS to deliver high quality services for patients and best value for taxpayers.
Our staff bring expertise across hundreds of specialisms — including clinical, operational, commissioning, technology, data science, cyber security, software engineering, education, and commercial — enabling us to design and deliver high-quality NHS services.
NHS England (London) exists to help London’s health and care system deliver better access, experience and outcomes for every community. This role sits at the heart of that mission—setting clear performance expectations, shining a light on variation, and coordinating targeted support so services continually improve. Our approach is collaborative, evidence‑driven and people‑centred, aligned to NHS priorities and national standards.
Earlier this year, the Government announced that NHS England will gradually merge with the Department of Health and Social Care, leading to full integration. The aim is to create a smaller, more strategic centre that reduces duplication and eliminates waste.
If successful at interview, we will initiate an Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) via the Electronic Staff Record (ESR). This retrieves key data from your current or previous NHS employer to support onboarding, including competency status, Continuous Service Dates (CSD), and annual leave entitlement. You may opt out at any stage of the recruitment process.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
The Director of Performance will:
• Lead on NHS planning by collecting and assuring plans to ensure that the Health system can commission the care their patients need within the resources they have available
• Lead on the monitoring and assurance of delivery against plan within the NHS, taking into account seasonal planning and resilience. This allows us to understand the true performance of the NHS and identify areas of good or poor performance
• Lead on the development of new indicators to monitor performance, this can involve working with policy leads, commissioners, providers, and other organisations to identify, create and test indicators
• Lead on assurance of the Health system via the development of indicators across performance, outcomes and patient experience
• Lead on providing timely, accurate and insightful information to executives and key stakeholders across all areas of health including acute, community, mental health and primary care.
• Team lead for regional analytics function, including strategic workforce analytics and regional productivity.
• Ensure a close working relationship with the Finance function so that analysis and insight of finance and operational performance and resulting action plans are aligned
• Provide oversight of regional performance against constitutional standards, annual operating plans and national or regional priorities. This includes activity, quality, finance, workforce and other performance targets
• Analyse variation to provide in-depth analysis of trends and relevant insights to identify potential issues early and to inform decision making.
• Lead regional reporting of operational performance and actions being taken regionally and locally to address poor performance to support improvement
• Provide regional input to the corporate teams to help them understand regional and local issues to develop the planning guidance and process
• Work with other regional directors and their staff, through the matrix structure, to ensure that all aspects of performance reporting are aligned to support regional priorities
• Provide regional leadership for data & analytics, working with the corporate data & analytics hub
• Manage Winter resilience and capacity planning, including winter monitoring
• Manage Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response (EPRR) for the region
• Manage Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) performance monitoring
• Manage the Elective Care performance monitoring
All responsibilities relate to both organisations (CCGs, Trusts and Foundation Trusts) and systems (STPs, ICS) and cover both NHS England. The aim is that there is one voice from both organisations in relation to all aspects of performance reporting
The post holder will be a member of the regional on-call rota.
Requirements (what’s essential to succeed):
• Proven senior leadership delivering measurable performance improvement in a complex healthcare setting.
• Advanced skills in performance reporting and analytics—able to translate data into clear insight and action.
• Track record of system collaboration with ICBs/providers and national teams to align priorities and deliver outcomes.
• Ability to deliver in a highly pressured environment and influence the most senior members of the NHS.
You can find further details about the role, including key responsibilities and accountabilities, alongside the organisational structure and person specification in the attached Job Description and other supporting documents.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Educated to masters level or equivalent level or equivalent experience of working at a senior level in specialist area
Skills
Essential criteria
- Proven ability to design and deliver complex programmes of work in a high pressure and changing environment
Experience
Essential criteria
- Experience of successfully operating in and delivering priorities in a partnership environment. Experience of working with CEOs, system leaders and other senior figures
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Edmund King
- Job title
- Director of Performance
- Email address
- [email protected]
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