Paul Mustow

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has confirmed the appointment of senior responsible owners (SROs) for the New Hospital Programme (NHP).

Paul Mustow, director of delivery performance and assurance for the NHP; and Charlotte Taylor CBE were appointed by Professor Sir Chris Whitty, interim permanent secretary at the DHSC, and Nick Smallwood, chief executive of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA).

Reporting to Andy Brittain, director general for finance and group operations at the DHSC, under the oversight of the Permanent Secretary as accounting officer for DHSC and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the duo will have personal responsibility for the delivery of the NHP’s strategic objectives and will be held accountable for the delivery of its objectives, policy intent, and outcomes.

This encompasses securing and protecting its vision, ensuring it is governed responsibly, reported on honestly, escalated appropriately, and influencing the context, culture, and operating environment of the programme.

They will also be responsible for ensuring the ongoing viability of the programme and recommending its pause or termination if appropriate.

And they will be held personally accountable and could be called by select committees to account for, and explain, the decisions and actions taken to deliver the programme.

Charlotte Taylor CBE

The full-time SRO roles, which will run for a minimum of three years, will be split between Taylor and Mustow, with Taylor’s role including delivering and iterating the long-term NHP strategy, sponsor’s requirements, and the programme business case, engaging all relevant subject matter experts across the programme’s wide stakeholder group.]

She will also ensure policy consistency and pro-actively influence and respond to policy changes which impact the NHP strategy, as well as ensuring that both programme and scheme funding is available to enable successful and timely delivery.

Mustow’s role is to provide robust programme oversight, clear and effective governance, and assurance of the technical and commercial programmatic approaches, to drive NHP delivery to time, cost, and quality, together with overseeing development of, and providing scrutiny to, the implementation of the NHP commercial strategy, ensuring that assurance conditions are met.

The announcement follows the recent review of the NHP, which concluded that all the schemes in the programme required capital investment, but that a new timetable for delivery was necessary.

The Government is backing this plan with investment which will increase up to £15bn over each consecutive five-year wave, averaging around £3bn a year, from 2030.

The exact profile of funding will be confirmed in rolling five-year waves at regular Spending Reviews, as with all government capital budgets in future.

The vision of the programme is to transform the way new healthcare infrastructure is delivered in the NHS, including the building of new hospitals, and its five strategic objectives are to:

• Deliver world-leading hospital environments that are able to provide exceptional patient care at the right time and in the right place, as well as offering excellent working environments for staff
• Deliver hospitals at significantly-lower cost and in significantly less time than for historical hospital delivery
• Ensure that all new hospitals integrate innovative national standards for healthcare infrastructure and modern building requirements for safety and sustainability
• Ensure that an enduring nationwide capability is created and maintained for enhanced healthcare infrastructure delivery, both in government and the private sector and across the lifecycle of projects delivered
• Support the co-design and co-creation of schemes in collaboration with local and regional health systems