New DHSC delivery unit to 'bring a laser-like focus on reform'

The Department of Health and Social Care is launching a delivery unit that promises to tackle some of the NHS’s most pressing problems.

The secretary of state's delivery unit will sit within DHSC and act as a mechanism through which the health secretary can hold NHS England and other relevant organisations to account for delivering on the government’s priorities, according to a job advert for the unit’s director.

It will “bring a laser-like focus on delivering the reform needed to drive improvement generally across health and care and specifically on the three things that surveys show matter most to the public”, the ad says – namely elective waiting times; urgent and emergency care waiting times and performance; and GP access.

The department is offering £125,000 a year for a director to lead the unit’s “small, multidisciplinary team”, who will be tasked with “tracking and challenging” delivery of the health secretary’s priorities, including manifesto commitments.

The unit will work to “raise the profile of delivery” throughout the department and will “operate in lockstep with departmental strategy functions”, according to the candidate pack for the role.

It will “share responsibility for ensuring that the delivery issues of the day are tackled in ways that do not defer problems for the long term and do not make implementation of the long-term strategy emerging from the 10-year plan more difficult”.

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Source: Civil Service World, 7 March 2025