Director of Governance

Director of Governance

East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust

The closing date is 14 December 2025

We are looking for an experienced, highly motivated and compassionate Director of Governance; we want you to bring your skills, expertise and innovation to our organization.

The role provides both challenges and development opportunities for a current or aspiring executive with a proven track record of delivery, who leads by example and encourages solutions.

Reporting to the Chief Executive and holding a non-voting Board position this is a highly influential role which will be responsible for the management of risk and governance across the Trust.

Our Director of Governance will share our Trust vision and values as we continue improvement across our organization.

If you are passionate about ensuring the delivery of high quality patient care, we are keen to hear from you.

Main duties of the job

The role requires a highly motivated, innovative, individual who can demonstrate logical thinking and problem solving. You will need to demonstrate a successful track record of the management of risk and governance across a large and complex organization. You will be an expert in supporting the organization to achieve the highest standard of corporate governance.

This post will make a unique and exceptional difference to our local community, our staff, many of whom live locally and who are highly committed to improving the health of our population and the next generation of healthcare professionals who come here to work and learn.

About us

We are ESNEFT and we provide hospital and community health services to almost one million people across east Suffolk and north Essex. Our dedicated staff deliver care from acute hospitals in Colchester and Ipswich, community hospitals, surgeries, community clinics and in patients' own homes.

We are one of the largest NHS organizations in England, employing more than 12,000 staff.

We pride ourselves on supporting our staff. We offer a wide range of training and development opportunities, as well as flexible working options.

Along with supporting you to achieve your career goals we offer a generous pension scheme, unsocial hours payments (where applicable), 27 days annual leave on commencement (pro rata) and access to a range of NHS discounts. Our Staff Health and Wellbeing programme offer a variety of services.

Our philosophy is that Time Matters to everyone. Across the Trust, we concentrate on improving the things we do and removing those which cause time delays for our staff and patients.

We are investing in our commitment to Time Matters with a partnership with leading electronic patient record (EPR) supplier Epic. This digital transformation will bring what's widely regarded as the world's best EPR system to ESNEFT, transforming life in hospital for staff and patients.

If you are passionate about patient care and want to develop your skills and knowledge, then we want to hear from you.

Find out about living and working here -

Job responsibilities

For further information on the role and responsibilities please see the attached application information pack.

Person Specification Qualifications

• Educated to Masters level standard or equivalent in relevant subject area
• Formal management or business qualification or equivalent relevant experience
• Quality improvement qualification or equivalent previous experience

Experience

• Recent experience of working in a strategic leadership role
• Experience of developing and influencing strategy, driving delivery and leading complex programmes of work at pace, and in situations of high ambiguity
• Expertise and understanding the issues facing the NHS
• NHS experience at a senior management level

Knowledge

• Expert-level knowledge of the critical factors in delivering improvements in governance standards relevant to an acute hospital.
• Expert knowledge of integrated governance systems and their management.
• In depth understanding of CQC, NICE, NHS England governance

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.