New chief exec for national NHS agency

Andrew New, currently the group director for purchasing and supply chain at construction equipment manufacturer JCB will take on the post of CEO of Supply Chain Coordination Ltd in September.

SCCL is the publicly owned management company that was set up to run NHS Supply Chain.

NHSSC buys upwards of £5.4bn worth of products for hospitals in England, from medical consumables and diagnostic equipment to office supplies and janitorial cleaning products.

Mr New will replace Colin McCready, the current chief financial officer and interim CEO. He stepped into the post after the former chief executive, Jin Sahota, resigned in September 2020.

Mr New will join the organisation at a point of significant change for procurement in the NHS.

NHS England is pushing for integrated care systems to be the base level for procurement, rather than trusts, by April 2022. And the centre is also in the process of transferring SCCL and NHSSC into NHS England.

Mr New will lead on “the embedding of SCCL [in NHSE], transforming and shaping the organisation in order to meet future demands for the NHS Supply Chain and customers,” according to the job advert published earlier this year.

He will also be responsible for bringing procurement and distribution of personal protective equipment back into SCCL and NHSSC’s remit.

The agency came under scrutiny last year when trusts experienced widespread shortages of personal protective equipment during the spring 2020 wave of the pandemic.

The government took away some of its responsibility for procuring and distributing PPE, setting up a dedicated PPE buying cell and contracting private firm Clipper Logistics to distribute PPE through a dedicated PPE portal.

The government is now transferring the PPE cell “into the management function of NHS Supply Chain [and] Supply Chain Coordination Ltd,” NHSSC told HSJ in May. Mr New will be responsible for this process.