Chief Executive Officer, St George’s, Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals and Health Group

**St George’s, Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals and Health Group,**

**Chief Executive Officer**

United Kingdom

Dear Candidate

Thank you for your interest in becoming the Group Chief Executive at St George’s, Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals and Health Group (gesh). This is a unique and important opportunity to help shape the future of healthcare across South West London and Surrey.

As one of the largest and most complex providers of NHS services in the country, gesh plays a vital role in the health and wellbeing of the 3.5 million people we serve. We deliver both specialist tertiary services and core hospital-based care through a committed workforce of over 17,000 staff, working across two major NHS trusts, St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust.

We are now looking to appoint an exceptional new Chief Executive to succeed Jacqueline Totterdell, who is leaving to become Director General for Health at Welsh Government.

In this high-profile and rewarding role, you will have the chance to drive our strategy, performance, governance and oversight to ensure we continue to deliver safe, high-quality and inclusive care. You will help us respond to our challenges, drive improvements, and support delivery of our five‑year strategy, ‘Outstanding Care, Together 2023–2028’. You will also help us ensure we remain a great place to work for our staff and a trusted partner within South West London and Surrey Heartlands integrated care systems (ICSs). To do this, you will need passion, determination, the ability to inspire and foster collaboration, and a commitment to improving the health and wellbeing of our population.

We are strongly committed to diversity and inclusion, and we encourage applicants from all backgrounds – particularly those who are currently under‑represented at Board level in the NHS. We are especially keen to meet candidates who can strengthen visible and cognitive diversity on our Board. If you are passionate about patient care, bring strong governance and leadership credentials, and are committed to helping reduce health inequalities in the communities we serve, we would be delighted to hear from you.

If this opportunity interests you, please contact our search partners at Alumni Global for an initial, confidential discussion. Frank McKenna, Global Managing Director, and Tom Patterson, Managing Director for Healthcare, would be pleased to speak with you.

Thank you once again for your interest in gesh.

Sir Mark Lowcock
Chair
St George’s, Epsom and St Helier Hospitals Group

About the Trusts

Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust

Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust (ESTH) provides a range of acute hospital and medical services to approximately 490,000 people living across south west London and north east Surrey and beyond. In addition, ESTH provides specialist services, in particular renal and neonatal intensive care, to a wider area, covering Surrey and parts of Sussex and Hampshire, and hosts the South West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre (SWLEOC) partnership. The Trust’s main commissioners are South West London Integrated Care Board and Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care Board. It also has a sizable specialist service contract with NHS England in relation to renal services, and we have exciting plans to improve how we deliver acute inpatient renal services in South West London and Surrey by integrating them into a new joint renal unit on the St George’s hospital site.

ESTH’s two main acute sites are St Helier Hospital in the London Borough of Sutton, within the South West London Integrated Care System, and Epsom Hospital in Surrey, within the Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care System. The Trust also provides out‐reach services at a number of more locally‐based care centres and is moving to increasingly integrated models of care working with local community, primary, and other service providers.

ESTH is the host for the delivery of community health services across both of its local place-based communities of Surrey Downs and Sutton. Our community contracts are delivered through contractual joint ventures and alliance agreements (Surrey Downs in partnership with the 3 local GP Federations and the community trust and Sutton in partnership with the local GP Federation, local authority and mental health trust). Discharging its host responsibilities to a high standard and working in partnership to transform pathways across hospital and community settings is a key priority for the future.

The Trust is also committed to the Building Your Future Hospital Programme, which will see the construction of a new, state-of-the-art Specialist Emergency Care Hospital in Sutton. This will bring together A&E, critical care, acute medicine, emergency surgery, inpatient paediatrics, and births in hospital on our Sutton site, meaning that clinical expertise, experience and resource will be in one place, 24/7, improving patient safety, sustainability and staffing levels. This Programme will also provide the means to significantly improve existing infrastructure at both Epsom and St Helier hospitals.

ESTH values

“Above all we value RESPECT”

It helps ESTH to live our behaviours:

· Kind

· Positive

· Professional

· Teamwork.

So we can achieve our mission statement: outstanding care, together.

St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

With over 10,000 dedicated staff caring for patients around the clock, St George’s is the largest healthcare provider in South West London and one of the biggest and busiest hospital Trusts in London. It provides services out of two main hospital sites, St George’s Hospital in Tooting and Queen Mary’s Hospital in Roehampton, as well as health centres, GP surgeries, schools, and people’s homes.

St George’s Hospital is one of four major trauma centres in London, and home to hyper acute stroke and heart attack centres. It is a major centre for cancer services, and one of the largest centres for cancer surgery and chemotherapy in the capital. St George’s is also one of biggest children’s hospitals, including being home to one of only four paediatric trauma units in London. In addition, St George’s is a major centre for neurosciences, offering patients innovative new treatments such as the country’s first 24/7 mechanical thrombectomy service. Its clinical teams also have growing influence in research, with more clinical trials undertaken than ever before. They are also part of the South London Cardiac and Stroke Network and the South West London and Surrey Trauma Network, for which St George’s Hospital is the designated heart attack centre, hyper-acute stroke unit and major trauma centre.

St George’s serves a population of 1.3 million across South West London. A large number of services, such as cardiothoracic medicine and surgery, neurosciences and renal transplantation, also cover significant populations from Surrey and Sussex, totalling around 3.5 million people.

The main site, St George’s Hospital in Tooting – one of the country’s principal teaching hospitals – is shared with City St George’s, University of London, whose School of Health and Medical Sciences trains medical students and carries out advanced medical research. The creation of the newly-merged City St George’s creates significant opportunities for a new strategic partnership between the Trust and the University.

St George’s values and behaviours

To achieve our vision of providing outstanding care for our patients, staff and the communities St George’s serve, we need to keep patients at the heart of everything that we do – our values are designed to inspire staff to achieve this. All staff are expected to live our values of being Excellent, Kind, Responsible & Respectful, and for staff to behave in ways that reflect these values.

Board values, behaviours and standards

All Executives should demonstrate a commitment to the Trust’s values and standards of behaviour

Ensure the Trust promotes equality and diversity for its patients, staff, and other stakeholders
Promote and safeguard the reputation of the Trust
Uphold the highest standards of integrity and probity, adhering to the Nolan Principles and the Trust values

The St George’s, Epsom and St Helier Hospitals Group (gesh) is one of the largest and most complex healthcare providers in the country, serving a population of approximately 3.5 million across South West London and Surrey. Formed as a strategic partnership between St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust, the Group combines world-class specialist services with vital district general hospital care. With a workforce of over 18,000 dedicated staff, gesh is committed to delivering safe, high-quality and compassionate care, reducing health inequalities, and improving outcomes for the diverse communities we serve.
We are at a pivotal point in moving to a mature Group operating model, reshaping services across sites, and strengthening research, education, digital and estates.
The role
We are now seeking an outstanding Group Chief Executive to lead the next phase of our development. Reporting to the Group Chair, Sir Mark Lowcock, you will set a clear direction, build momentum and deliver measurable improvements in quality, access, safety, experience and financial sustainability. You will champion an inclusive, compassionate and high‑performing culture where colleagues feel valued, trusted and able to do their best work.
What you’ll lead
- A Group operating model that aligns governance and creates the conditions for consistent, high‑quality care across sites.
- Service transformation to design and deliver networked pathways and clinical configurations that improve outcomes and reduce unwarranted variation.
- Performance and flow which recovers standards in urgent and emergency care, RTT, long waits, diagnostics and cancer, with transparent trajectories and benefits tracked to patients and staff.
- Quality and safety initiatives that strengthen quality governance, incident learning and maternity services and embed continuous improvement and psychological safety.
- People and culture that is designed to continue to improve NHS Staff Survey outcomes, develop leadership capacity and capability, and make equality, diversity and inclusion integral to every decision.
- Finance and value to deliver a credible medium‑term plan, grip agency spend and productivity, and reinvest benefits where they make the biggest difference to patients and communities.
- Digital, estates and research initiatives to deliver major digital and estates programmes and deepen partnerships with our university and system colleagues
About you
You are a seasoned leader who brings very senior executive experience in a large, complex and ideally multi-site organisation, preferably with a successful track record as a proven Chief Executive in the NHS, and experience of delivering strong operational and financial performance. You combine strategic clarity with visible, empowering leadership and you hold yourself and others to account with fairness and candour. You build strong executive teams, work well with Non‑Executive colleagues, and engage confidently with regulators, system partners, staff, Governors, patients and elected representatives. You bring:
- A record of delivering large‑scale change across organisational boundaries and improving quality, access and value.
- Sound financial and operational grip, with the judgement to balance safety, performance and affordability.
- Inclusive, values‑driven leadership, with tangible improvements in staff experience and EDI.
- The ability to create a compelling story of change and take people with you, both inside the Group and across the wider system.
This is a unique opportunity to contribute to the leadership and governance of a major hospitals group delivering high-quality, inclusive healthcare services to a diverse population across South West London, Surrey and beyond.
Our commitment to inclusion
We want our leadership to reflect the rich diversity of the communities we serve. We warmly encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds and lived experience, including those who are under‑represented at Board level. We will make reasonable adjustments throughout the process and consider flexible arrangements where possible.
Please click here to view the Role Description & Person Specification
If you wish to be considered for this role please provide the following:
- Quoting the role reference number:
Chief Executive: A040998
- a CV that includes your address and contact details, highlighting and explaining any gaps in your employment history
- a supporting statement that highlights your motivation for applying and your understanding of the NHS and the role. You should outline your personal responsibility and achievement within previous roles and how your experience matches the person specification
- the names, positions, organisations and contact details for three referees. Your referees should be individuals in a line management capacity, and cover your most recent employer, any regulated health or social care activity or where roles involved children or vulnerable adults. Your references may be taken prior to interview and may be shared with the selection panel. In accordance with NHSE’s FPPT framework if appointed your references and other background checks will be shared with the trusts and NHS England.
- please complete and return the NHS England monitoring information form, which can be downloaded here
- please complete and return the NHS England Fit and Proper Person self declaration form, which can be downloaded here.
- tell us about any dates when you will not be available
Right to work checks
If you are successfully shortlisted, our partner, Yoti, will contact you to complete an online right to work check. This is a quick and secure process, ensuring that all necessary legal requirements are met before proceeding further in the recruitment process.
Monitoring
One of Alumni Global’s and gesh's objectives is to ensure that its workforce is reflective of the local community and therefore we actively encourage applications from under-represented groups. So that we can successfully achieve these aims, while it is not mandatory we would encourage every applicant to complete the “Equal Opportunities Monitoring form” so that we can measure the effectiveness of our efforts. The Recruiting Manager does not have access to the Monitoring Information Sections of the application form at any stage of the process and the information provided will be kept entirely confidential.
For a confidential discussion on this role please contact:
Frank McKenna, Global Managing Director or Beth Stickney, Principal Researcher on +44 7703 821 996
Candidate adjustment
If you require any reasonable adjustments to be made as part of the recruitment process please can you advise us so that we can ensure this is accommodated.
Closing date: 13th October 2025
Stakeholder sessions: 28th October 2025
Final interviews: 5th November 2025
Please ensure you have made a note of the final interview date(s). We recommend that you bookmark this microsite, as any potential updates regarding the role will be posted online.