Joint Director of Corporate Governance
Our values are: We Care, We Respect, We are Inclusive – so we are looking for people who live and breathe these qualities when supporting service users and carers, and in their relationships with colleagues in the Trust and our partner organisations.
Job overview
Joint Director of Corporate Governance, East London NHS FT & North East London NHS FT
East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT) & North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT)
Location: London, UK| Full-Time, PermanentClosing date: 28 May 2025
Shortlisting: 6 June 2025
Online stakeholder session: 11 June 2025
Face to Face Interviews: 12 June 2025
Are you a strategic leader with a people-first mindset? Can you transform NHS governance into a powerful enabler of better mental health care, smarter systems, and real impact?
We are seeking an inspirational leader to bring strategic oversight, operational excellence, and a collaborative spirit to shape the future of NHS corporate governance across ELFT and NELFT in North East London. This role is about more than compliance – it’s about embedding governance as a strategic enabler, supporting high-quality, people-centred mental health and community health services for the populations we serve.
About the Role
As Joint Director of Corporate Governance, you’ll provide strategic leadership across all aspects of corporate governance, compliance, and operational effectiveness, working at the heart of both NHS Trusts.
Main duties of the job
Your Responsibilities:
- Shaping corporate and system-wide governance to support integrated, place-based mental health care and community health care.
- Providing expert counsel to our Chair, Boards, Councils of Governors, and executive leadership.
- Ensuring full compliance with the NHS Provider Licence, Code of Governance, and Well-led Framework.
- Leading and developing high-performing teams across four key functions: corporate governance, secretariat, executive office, and governors and members support.
You’ll champion governance as a shared responsibility woven into the fabric of the NHS Trusts, not a siloed function. Through strong relationships and visible leadership, you’ll embed a culture where good governance is understood, valued, and seen as a trusted enabler, driving better outcomes, strengthening mental health and community health services, and fostering learning, accountability, and trust.
As a People Person, You Will:
- Strengthen engagement between the Boards, Councils, and members.
- Champion inclusion, accountability, and transparency.
- Raise the profile of administration as a profession, driving continuous improvement and career development within the governance function.
- Ensure governance systems reflect our commitment to service users, population health, and lived experience.
Working for our organisation
Collaboration Across Trusts:
- Align governance approaches across ELFT and NELFT to deliver efficiencies, clarity, and consistency.
- Lead governance integration with Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and provider collaboratives.
- Drive collaborative governance frameworks that support innovative, equitable, and sustainable mental health and community health services across East London
What We’re Looking For:
- Deep expertise in NHS corporate governance at Board level, with a strategic and operational mindset.
- Strong leadership credentials with experience leading high-performing, multi-functional teams.
- Outstanding interpersonal skills and the ability to influence, advise, and support senior leaders.
- A passion for equity, innovation, and continuous improvement.
- A collaborative style and the vision to bring people, systems, and processes together for impact.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Why Join Us?
This is an exciting moment for ELFT and NELFT – two values-driven, innovative NHS Trusts leading change across the mental health and community health sectors. If you’re ready to lead with purpose, build trusted governance systems, and make a tangible difference for staff and service users in North East London, we want to hear from you.
Apply Now:
We are committed to diversity and inclusion and welcome applications from all backgrounds, especially underrepresented groups.
#NHSJobs #MentalHealthCareers #GovernanceLeadership #LondonNHS #ELFT #NELFT
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria- Qualification relevant to the role and/or comparable health governance/assurance experience
- Master’s Degree or equivalent experience at a senior level in a relevant environment
Experience
Essential criteria- Significant and demonstrable experience particularly within corporate governance at a senior level role within the NHS or similar complex public sector organisation operating within a complex and highly political environment, with evidence of extensive engagement, persuasion and influencing at Executive and Non-Executive Board level
- Operating at or near to Board level
- Extensive understanding of NHS corporate governance, including substantial and proven experience in legal and governance frameworks, statutory regulations and corporate compliance
- Proven experience of designing and implementing governance frameworks that ensure service user/patient safety, regulatory compliance and quality improvement
- Strong track record in planning and managing a broad range of complex activities, adapting to changing circumstances
- A track record of developing and embedding robust internal controls and risk management frameworks to support corporate governance in an NHS organisation and particularly identifying, assessing and mitigating risks that could impact on service user and patient care and outcomes
Making Things Better
Quality Improvement is a key part of our work to improve our services and refine how we do things. We have a global reputation for our quality improvement work and we don’t stand still! So we offer a fantastic opportunity for our staff to learn, lead and contribute towards improving our services.
We launched our Five Year Strategy in April 2018, which identified four main strategic outcomes to improve: population health outcomes, experience of care, staff experience and improve value. This complements the NHS Long Term Strategy and sets out our direction of travel.
Our Community
We provide a wide range of community health and mental health inpatient services to children, young people, adults of working age, and older adults in The City of London, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Bedfordshire and Luton. We also provide psychological therapy services to the London Borough of Richmond, and provide Forensic services to the whole of North East London.We provide services in urban and rural settings, sometimes in our inpatient units, but mostly in the community close to where people live. Integrated care is key in making the best use of resources and providing effective care.
Aiming High
We were rated ‘Outstanding’ by the CQC in 2016, were proud to be rated ‘Outstanding’ again in 2018 and continue to be rate 'Outstanding' in 2021.. We were named in the HSJ’s Top 10 best places to work in healthcare and were voted Provider Trust of the Year in 2018.
Staff and Service Users United
We strive to ensure that staff feel valued by the Trust and as they are truly pivotal in delivering better outcomes for our patients and service users. Our aspiration is to help to make ELFT the best place to work. This Trust is clinician-led and provides the highest possible level of clinical expertise throughout its services.We pride ourselves on our service user involvement. A service user will be on your assessment centre and interview panel if you are invited to meet us.
We especially welcome people with lived experience of health difficulties, with insight and understanding of different backgrounds, cultures and lifestyles in our population as we believe that this will equip staff to deliver a high standard of care to our service users and patients.
Diversity
ELFT Is committed to being a diverse organisation and our workforce is reflective of the population and communities we serve. We believe that having colleagues with a range of backgrounds and life experiences enriches and adds value to the outcomes we have set out to achieve.Having partnered and endorsed by organisations who are representative and experts in various areas of equality and diversity, we can ensure we are meeting the pre-set standards all the way from recruitment stage throughout the career journey of our employees by being accessible, having fair inclusive practices and a host of staff networks to support, nurture and celebrate our valued staff in the workplace.
Other reasons to apply
As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that’s job share, part time or another flexible pattern.
As part of the relocation scheme we presently have, the Trust could support you with offering up to £10,000 for removal and associated expenses. This is subject to change and terms and conditions apply.
What Next?
If you like the sound of ELFT, don’t waste a moment. We sometimes close adverts early if there is a high response, so apply now!
As part of our recruitment process we may be required to share information you provide on the application form with NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA) and/or other organisations for the purpose of the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of fraud or any other unlawful activity affecting the NHS.We also use third party providers to check and verify your qualifications who may be contacting you on our behalf to verify the same..
If you do not hear from us within four weeks of the closing date, please consider that you have not been shortlisted on this occasion. You must provide professional email addresses for all referees as we will contact them as soon as an offer has been made.Please note we do not request references prior to interviews. All applications made through NHS Jobs account will be processed by TRAC System. Please note that some emails may go to your spam/junk mailbox so make sure you check this regularly.
Find us online at www.elft.nhs.uk | Find us on Facebook | Follow us on @NHS_ELFT