Operations Assurance Director, HUC

HUC (formerly Herts Urgent Care) is a clinically led, values driven social enterprise delivering a wide range of integrated urgent and primary care services. Since our beginnings in 2007 as a GP-led out-of-hours provider, we’ve grown significantly to provide NHS 111, out-of-hours GP care, urgent treatment centres, dentistry, and clinical assessment services across both the East and South West of England.

We now support over 4.5 million patients annually through a committed team of around 1,400 employees and 370 GPs and clinical professionals. Our culture is defined by our values, caring, dynamic, innovative, and respectful, and by a shared commitment to putting patients at the heart of everything we do.

Dear Applicant,
Thank you for your interest in joining HUC as our new Operations Assurance Director. This is a newly created and strategically vital role, and an exciting opportunity to help shape the next phase of our growth, culture, and impact.
HUC is a clinically led, values-driven social enterprise delivering a wide range of urgent and primary care services across the East and South West of England through services including NHS 111, urgent treatment centres, out-of-hours care, clinical assessment, and dentistry.
As Operations Assurance Director, you’ll be our most senior operational leader, responsible for the day-to-day running of services across multiple regions, with a clear focus on performance, budget discipline, and safe, effective care at scale. You’ll report directly to me and work closely with the Executive Team to ensure operational delivery is fully aligned with our strategy, values, and ambitions.
But this isn’t just a delivery role, it’s a real opportunity to reshape how we work. You’ll bring structure and clarity to our operating model, drive consistency and accountability, and lead a culture shift that moves us away from short-term fixes towards sustainable, data-driven improvement. That means challenging legacy thinking, embedding smarter ways of working, and helping us grow well, not just fast.
You’ll be leading across historically siloed services, so you’ll need to be someone who can bring people and processes together with clarity, pace and purpose. Our scale is significant - over 2 million patient contacts each year - so we’re looking for someone with real operational breadth, but also the curiosity and ambition to help us evolve from being small and nimble to large and still agile.
Externally, your credibility will matter. Our contracts are all contestable, and our partnerships with commissioners and system leaders depend on us being trusted to deliver. We need someone who brings confidence, energy, and a willingness to work collaboratively to improve outcomes for patients and communities.
At HUC, we value transparency, straight talking, and shared responsibility. You’ll be joining a passionate executive team in a culture that’s low on hierarchy and high on pace, challenge, and good humour. We don’t pretend it’s perfect, no growing organisation is, but we’re honest about where we are and committed to where we’re going.
We welcome applications from a wide range of backgrounds. Whether you bring experience from healthcare or transferable insight from other sectors, if you’re an ambitious operational leader with Board-level potential, who thrives in fast-moving environments and wants to make a meaningful difference, we’d love to hear from you.
Thank you again for your interest in HUC. We look forward to learning more about what you could bring to this essential role.
Warm regards,
Sarah Robertson - Goldsworthy
Chief Commercial and Delivery Officer HUC
HUC is a clinically led, not-for-profit social enterprise delivering integrated urgent and primary care services to more than 4.5 million people across the East and South West of England. Since our origins as a GP-led out-of-hours provider in Hertfordshire in 2007, we’ve grown into a regionally diverse organisation delivering services such as NHS 111, urgent treatment centres, community hubs, intervention vehicles, dental urgent care, out-of-hours GP care and clinical assessment.
Our growth has been shaped by the needs of the communities and systems we serve. Over the past year, we’ve deepened our role in Somerset and Cornwall, expanded infrastructure with a new contact centre in Bedford, and strengthened our clinical governance with the introduction of the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework. We were proud to receive a 'Good' rating from the CQC for our Integrated Urgent Care services in the East, recognising the quality, professionalism and compassion our teams bring every day.
Click here for the full candidate pack and job description
The Operations Assurance Director (OAD) is a new senior appointment at a pivotal moment in HUC’s development. It replaces the former Chief Operating Officer post and reflects a conscious decision to reframe the senior operational leadership model, placing emphasis on assurance, performance and consistency.
The OAD will report to the Chief Commercial and Delivery Officer and act as the most senior operational lead in the organisation. The creation of this role follows a period during which HUC’s operations have been overseen by members of the executive team, without a single post holder accountable for the totality of service delivery. This appointment therefore represents both a structural and cultural shift: from reactive, sometimes ad hoc operations to a more integrated, performance focused and data led model.
Key Responsibilities:
- Lead operational performance across all services, ensuring contractual compliance and operational excellence.
- Embed real time performance monitoring, operational dashboards and evidence-based management.
- Instil a consistent culture of performance and accountability across regions and services.
- Develop operational leaders through coaching, support and role modelling.
- Collaborate closely with finance, clinical and governance leads to align operational delivery with wider strategic goals.
- Lead transformation work to modernise systems, eliminate duplication, and drive sustainable service improvement.
We are looking for someone who:
- Has senior operational leadership experience in a complex, regulated environment.
- Brings a track record of improving service delivery and building performance systems.
- Is financially astute, able to manage within budgets and link cost to activity and outcomes.
- Can lead through influence, with emotional intelligence and a team-based mindset.
- Is hands on, visible, and confident engaging with frontline staff.
This role could suit an experienced Operations Director or Deputy COO seeking a broader remit, or a senior general manager with proven capability ready to step up. While healthcare experience could be helpful (particularly NHS 111, urgent care, or ambulance services), we are open to candidates from outside the sector, including logistics, defence, customer services or other regulated, time critical service environments.
The successful candidate will need to bring structure and systems, but also empathy and engagement. HUC’s culture remains informal and human, what works is leadership that is accessible, grounded and driven by purpose. This is a high impact role, with significant responsibility and real opportunity to shape how care is delivered across multiple regions. It is ideally suited to someone who sees growth and challenge as exciting, and who has the vision and determination to help HUC succeed in its next chapter.
All applications must include:
- A full curriculum vitae/resume
- Quoting the relevant role reference number: A040962
- A covering letter highlighting the aspects of the job description and HUC that particularly attract you to the post (Microsoft Word document)
- Contact details for three referees, these will not be contacted without your permission. (References should validate a minimum period of six years employment)
- A completed Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form (which you will be redirected to once you have submitted your application) *
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 HUC’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:
Thomas Patterson, Managing Director or Michael Earnshaw, Director of Research on +44 77 1905 59 71.
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: 22nd September 2025
Final Interviews: 7th October 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.