Chief Quality Officer

East London NHS Foundation Trust

We are seeking an outstanding and values driven Executive Leader to join us as our new Chief Quality Officer. We want someone who is passionate about continuous quality improvement, meaningful co production, and reducing health inequalities, and who can provide visible, credible leadership across a diverse organisation.

Our trust strategy commits us to improving quality of life for all. This means improving the overall health of the communities we serve, alongside delivering the highest quality care, excellent staff experience, and good value for money. As the first Marmot Trust in the country, we actively look to work "beyond the hospital walls" to make our bit of the world a fairer place to live and work, and to support our populations to thrive. To do so, we rely on our organisational treasures - quality improvement, people participation, clinical and care professional leadership, our kind and caring staff, and our commitment to inclusivity.

Whilst we are currently working to refresh our trust strategy for the next five years, our mission and our organisational treasures will remain at the heart of everything we do. The Chief Quality Officer will be front and centre in helping us to do so.

Main duties of the job

The Opportunity

The Chief Quality Officer (CQO) role is central to our ability to meet these challenges and deliver on our vision. The portfolio spans a broad range of functions that shape how we design and deliver care and how we use data and insight to improve outcomes.

The role includes:

• Co leading strategy and planning
• Oversight of quality, safety and performance
• Leadership of data, analytics and intelligence
• Embedding a quality management system (QMS) that reduces unwarranted variation, supports intelligent use of data, applies consistent improvement methodologies and ensures quality is systematically designed into everything we do

This is a role for a leader who can build on strong foundations, sustain momentum, and take quality and improvement to the next level across services, places and systems.

Like the wider NHS, we are operating in a time of significant challenge across the NHS. Rising demand, workforce pressures, financial constraints and persistent health inequalities are reshaping the landscape of health and care. Despite this, ELFT has a strong track record of innovation and delivery, including the development of integrated models of care in partnership with local authorities, voluntary sector organisations and system partners. We are well positioned to build on this success, improve population health outcomes and continue to play a leading role within our Integrated Care Systems.

About us

ELFT provides a wide range of community and inpatient services for children, young people, adults of working age, older adults and forensic services across two Integrated Care Systems and six place based systems, serving diverse populations across the City of London and the London Boroughs of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Luton, Bedford and Central Bedfordshire. For some specialised services we commission and provide across north central and east London and beyond.

We are proud to be a high performing, clinically led and service user-driven Trust with a strong culture of continuous improvement and a deep commitment to delivering high quality, equitable care. As the first NHS Marmot Trust, we are proud to act as an anchor institution - tackling the wider determinants of health and championing inclusion across Bedfordshire, Luton and East London.

Job responsibilities

Join Us

This is an opportunity to join a Trust that is passionate about making a real difference. If you share our values and are ready to lead with compassion, hope, honour and humility, we would love to hear from you.

For more information about this outstanding opportunity, please email us at .

We warmly welcome applications from members of our vibrant and diverse communities who bring an understanding of some of the challenges faced by our local populations, and who are committed to developing a truly inclusive culture. This is an exciting time to be part of our journey.

For detailed role profile please see the attached Job description and Person spec & the Candidate Pack

Advert closing date - 31st January 2026

Interviews week commencing - 23rd February 2026

Person Specification Clinical or operational experience

• Experience in a senior clinical / care professional or operational role within healthcare, and ideally in an NHS Trust
• Research position / affiliation

Academic achievement

• Degree level education
• Masters degree or further academic qualifications in a related field
• Published research or quality work, of national or international significance; experience in peer review process

Knowledge and experience

• Expertise in quality improvement techniques and their application in varied clinical settings, aligned to ELFT's method and approach (model for improvement)
• Improvement advisor, certified through the Institute for Healthcare Improvement
• Experience of improving organisational performance through implementing a systematic approach to quality improvement
• Experience of design and delivery of large scale quality improvement programmes, that have achieved demonstrable results in large, complex organisations/systems
• Extensive experience of teaching, designing educational and learning programmes, and coaching
• Experience in working with executive teams and Boards
• Knowledge of the NHS performance frameworks and approach. Experience of applying improvement methods to performance topics
• Knowledge of the NHS performance frameworks and approach. Experience of applying improvement methods to performance topics

Management knowledge and experience

• Experience of senior management in a clinical organisation
• Budget management

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Depending on experience per annum inc HCA