Amanda Pritchard quits as NHS England chief executive in shock move

Amanda Pritchard is standing down as chief executive of NHS England, in a development that will shock the health service.

Her departure from the top job follows recent meetings she held with Wes Streeting, the health secretary, to discuss his plans to overhaul the service and her own future role.

Her meeting with Streeting on Monday proved pivotal. Well-placed sources say her exit after three and a half years in the post is amicable and that she has not been forced out.

It will be confirmed in an official announcement on Tuesday afternoon, which is expected to portray her stepping down as a voluntary decision after much consideration.

But it comes less than a month after two influential House of Commons committees made unusual criticisms of her suitability to lead the NHS through a period of what Streeting and Keir Starmer have said will be the biggest overhaul since the service’s creation in 1948.

The public accounts committee said that she, her deputy, Julian Kelly, and two senior civil servants at the Department of Health and Social Care were “complacent” and lacked dynamism.

Barely 12 hours later, MPs on the health and social care committee went public with their doubts about Pritchard shortly after she had given two hours of evidence to them.

In a statement, the cross-party committee said she had not demonstrated that she had the “drive and dynamism” to transform the NHS in the radical and urgent way the government wanted. A lack of “sharpness” in her answers had left committee members “exasperated”, it added.

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 25 February 2025