• First chair of procurement agency’s management company steps down after three years in job
  • Oversaw major transformation of how NHS buys medicals consumables and other goods
  • To remain in post until new CEO takes up role

The chair of NHS Supply Chain’s publicly owned management company will step down at the end of September after three years in the post.

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James Spittle

James Spittle will step down as non-executive chair of Supply Chain Coordination Ltd on 30 September this year.

He will still be in the role when SCCL’s new chief executive, Andrew New, takes up his post on 1 September. Heather Tierney-Moore, one of SCCL’s non-executive directors, will become interim chair.

SCCL is wholly owned by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and provides management for NHS Supply Chain. Mr Spittle joined the organisation in September 2018 as its first chair during a period of major transformation for NHS procurement.

NHS Supply Chain operations had been contracted out to logistics multinational DHL. This ended in October 2018 when SCCL was set up to oversee the revamp of how the NHS’ procurement agency purchased and distributed over £5bn in goods and services.

It set up 11 category towers that siloed defined groups of medical consumables and other non-medical goods before outsourcing the work of procuring and distributing products in each category to third parties — some set up by NHS organisations and others from the private sector.

NHS Supply Chain and SCCL were intended to streamline and defragment NHS procurement to support the services’ ambition to use its scale to buy more efficiently and get better value for the billions it spends on non-pay items.

The agency and its management company came under heavy criticism at the start of the pandemic when the NHS across England experienced shortages of personal protective equipment.

One procurement lead described the situation as “completely chaotic” last March. By April, the government had largely taken PPE procurement and distribution off NHS Supply Chain.

The government set up a new procurement cell and national portal through which trusts could buy the essential kit, taking control of this category of products. PPE procurement is currently being returned to NHS Supply Chain.

The Department of Health and Social Care’s transformation of NHS Supply Chain promised to find £2.4bn over the first five years of its existence.

Source

NHSSC statement

Source Date

August 2021

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