The chairs of the four new strategic health authority clusters have been announced by the Appointments Commission.
They are:
- NHS London: Professor Mike Spyer (current interim chair of NHS London)
- NHS North of England (comprising North West, North East and Yorkshire & Humber): Kathryn Riddle (current chair of NHS Yorkshire & Humber)
- NHS Midlands and East (West Midlands, East Midlands and East of England): Sarah Boulton (current chair of NHS East of England)
- NHS South of England (South West, South Central and South East Coast): Dr Geoff Harris (current chair of NHS South Central)
SHA clusters are expected to be in place by the beginning of October.
Sir David Nicholson, Chief Executive of the NHS, said: ‘Clustering SHAs will ensure we have sufficient capacity in the system to maintain grip and momentum throughout the transition period.
‘Moving to four clusters will ensure the best fit between our transition arrangements and the future arrangements for the NHS Commissioning Board, which will be organised across the same geographical areas. I am pleased that these appointments have now been agreed so that we can start to move forward establishing the clusters as quickly as possible.’
In addition, Sir David announced that Sir Peter Carr, currently chair of NHS North East, will chair the steering group to establish the NHS Trust Development Authority (NTDA).
The steering group will work with the new SHA clusters and the Department of Health to create a single operating model to support NHS trusts achieving Foundation Trust status.
‘Doing this now will help to provide a smooth transition of responsibility from SHA clusters to the NTDA when it is fully and formally established on 1 April 2013.’ Sir David added.
Hello – I have just read the article ‘Appointments made to head SHA Clusters’.
I was wondering whether you could possibly signpost me towards any further information about the clusters, eg their role, where they will be based, and so on.
Thank you very much for any help that you can give me with this,
I note the changes to the SHA clusters. I would have preferred to have seen the retention of all the existing SHA regions including the South Central region. Indeed, I hope, the name will be retained as a subdistrict of the proposed south of England SHA cluster which also includes the current South West and South East Coast SHAs.
However, if these regions are to be replaced by SHA clusters, may I suggest the name of the one covering the south of England (Cornwall to Kent) is called Southern England SHA cluster and likewise the north of England, is named Northern England SHA cluster.
Regards
Andy Simmonds.