Deputy Director - Nursing & Quality

Job summary
This is a senior leadership opportunity within our newly clustered Integrated Care Boards, spanning Coventry & Warwickshire and Herefordshire & Worcestershire.

The postholder will play a key role within the Nursing & Quality directorate, working closely with the Chief Nursing Officer and system colleagues to ensure robust quality and safety across the system. The role will operate across organisational boundaries, influencing providers, partners and stakeholders to improve outcomes for local populations.

The initial focus of this role will be focussed on providing senior leadership and oversight of the All-Age Continuing Care portfolio, ensuring delivery in line with the National Framework and improving consistency, performance and patient experience. You will lead transformation within AACC services, supported by Associate Directors of Nursing & Quality, strengthening governance, assurance and ways of working across two previously separate systems.

This will be a hands on leadership role, requiring pace, resilience and the ability to operate effectively in a changing and complex environment.

As this work in AACC progresses and matures, the scope of the role will broaden, with opportunities to contribute more widely across Nursing and Quality. This will include opportunities in quality assurance and improvement, patient experience and supporting the ICBs strategic commissioning agenda.

Main duties of the job

• Provide senior professional leadership across the ICBs.
• Support delivery of the ICBs statutory responsibilities across Nursing & Quality
• Lead oversight and improvement of the AACC portfolio
• Strengthen quality assurance, governance arrangements and escalation processes
• Work in partnership with NHS providers, local authorities, VCSE partners and regulators
• Contribute to system-wide quality improvement initiatives and learning
• Produce high quality assurance and performance reporting to senior forums and committees
• Support the development of consistent approaches across the clustered ICBs

About us
Following recent clustering, our ICBs are operating across two established systems. This creates an exciting opportunity to:

• Play a central role in shaping leadership across a new cluster
• Share best practice and reduce unwarranted variation
• Improve outcomes and experiences for diverse populations
• Influence system partners at place and provider collaborative level
• Lead meaningful improvement in areas that directly impact patient outcomes and experience

CWHW ICB has an ambition to improve population health, tackle inequalities and deliver high-quality, sustainable care.

Details
Date posted: 02 July 2026
Pay scheme: Agenda for change
Band: Band 8d
Salary: £94,356 to £108,814 a year
Contract: Permanent
Working pattern: Full-time, Flexible working
Reference number: D9105-26-0000
Job locations: Parkside House, Quinton Road, Coventry, CV1 2NJ; Shire Hall, Warwick, CV34 4RL; St. Owens Chambers, 22 St. Owen Street, Hereford, HR1 2PL; Kirkham House, John Comyn Drive, Worcester, WR3 7NS

Job responsibilities
The Deputy Director of Nursing & Quality is a senior leader within the Coventry & Warwickshire and Herefordshire & Worcestershire ICB cluster, responsible for providing strategic leadership across the Nursing and Quality directorate. The postholder supports the Executive Director/Chief Nursing Officer in delivering the ICBs statutory responsibilities ensuring that services commissioned and delivered across the cluster are safe, effective, compassionate, and equitable.

The role has predominant responsibility for the NHS All Age Continuing Care portfolio, providing strategic oversight of the service and ensuring full adherence to the National Framework for Continuing Healthcare and Funded Nursing Care. The postholder will also contribute through matrix work across other quality functions, providing senior leadership where required.

Working with NHS providers, local authorities, primary care, VCSE partners, and regulators, the Deputy Director of Nursing & Quality leads high impact programmes that strengthen quality assurance, improve patient outcomes, reduce inequalities, and promote professional leadership at scale. The role fosters a culture focused on patient safety, learning, improvement, and innovation.

This is a key leadership post, working collaboratively as part of the senior leadership team to provide strategic direction, support service transformation, and contribute to the development of services that achieve the long-term vision and priorities of the ICB. The postholder will deputise for the Director of Quality and Chief Nursing Officer (Executive Director) as required.

The Deputy Director of Nursing & Quality will:

• Provide senior leadership across the ICB cluster to support delivery of the Nursing & Quality directorate duties.
• Deputise for the Director of Nursing and Quality and Chief Nursing Officer (Executive Director), including attendance at ICB Board meetings and representing the organisation in senior forums.
• Champion compassionate leadership, professional development, and excellence across all care settings.
• Lead quality assurance activity for the postholders portfolio, ensuring compliance with national frameworks (including PSIRF, Never Events, and Duty of Candour).
• Provide senior oversight of provider quality surveillance, early warning systems, and escalation processes
• Ensure robust tracking, learning, and thematic review of incidents, complaints, and serious incidents
• Prepare high quality quality and safety reports, risk summaries, and assurance papers for ICB/ICS committees
• Maintain strong governance frameworks and lead the development and review of cluster wide policies, procedures, and risk registers
• Ensure quality risks are identified, mitigated, and escalated appropriately
• Interface with CQC, NHS England, Health Education England, and other regulators on quality matters
• Lead the clusters approach to regulatory compliance, including provider oversight, action plans, and improvement trajectories
• Represent the ICB cluster at regional and national quality forums
• Provide senior strategic oversight of the All Age Continuing Care service
• Ensure full compliance with the National Framework for Continuing Healthcare and Funded Nursing Care
• Support high risk case review processes and ensure learning informs service development
• Ensure AACC governance, policies, and performance frameworks are robust and consistently applied
• Ensure safeguarding systems, policies, and governance are effective across the cluster
• Support system wide learning from safeguarding reviews and high risk cases
• Promote and embed evidence based practice, patient safety, and quality improvement methodologies
• Lead system wide quality improvement priorities across acute, community, mental health, primary care, and social care partners
• Support quality improvement collaboratives and system learning programmes
• Work with transformation teams to embed quality, safety, and patient experience in service redesign
• Provide leadership for primary care quality assurance, supporting improvement, patient safety, IPC, and clinical standards within PCNs and practices
• Support initiatives that improve patient experience, access, and safety in primary care
• Line manage and professionally support senior quality leaders across the cluster
• Foster an inclusive culture that supports learning, equity, psychological safety, and compassionate leadership
• Develop quality leadership capability through coaching, mentoring, and professional development
• Promote staff wellbeing and ensure safe and effective working environments

On Call Rota
There will be a requirement for post holders to participate in the On Call rota. On Call is for the duration of up to one week and the frequency of this will depend on the number of staff on the rota. Staff on call may be required to attend any ICB building whilst on call particularly in the case of a major incident; however generally queries are resolved over the telephone.

Person Specification
Personal Qualities
Essential

• Compassionate, inclusive, and values driven leader; highly credible with clinical and executive stakeholders.
• Strategic thinker with excellent judgement and decision-making skills.
• Resilient, adaptable, and comfortable managing complexity and ambiguity.
• Passionate about improving patient outcomes, safety, and equity.
• Strong provider stakeholder engagement skills, including the provision of high-quality written engagement material for external organisations including Local Authority or NHS Provider meetings.
• Able to deal with highly sensitive, highly contentious information on a frequent basis in a professional and confidential manner.
• Able to identify risks, anticipate issues and create solutions to resolve problems in relation to project or service delivery.
• Ability to understand a broad range of complex information quickly and make relevant decisions where opinions differ or there is no obvious solution.
• Ability to interpret national policy for implementation.
• Highly developed planning and organisational skills, with the ability to plan and undertake own workload without direct supervision and manage competing priorities to meet agreed timeframes.
• Ability to lead, inspire, and motivate others to high performance by agreeing clear goals and objectives, providing support and guidance and creating opportunities for development.

Experience
Essential

• Senior leadership experience in the NHS/Public sector - ICB, local authority, provider, regulator, or equivalent.
• Strong understanding of quality governance, patient safety frameworks, safeguarding, IPC, clinical risk, provider oversight, and Continuing Healthcare.
• Experience leading complex quality improvement or governance programmes.
• Highly skilled in influencing, negotiating, and building relationships across systems.
• Ability to analyse and interpret complex quality, safety, and performance data.
• Experience of partnership working with regulators such as CQC and NHS England.
• Experience managing risks associated with service change and leading outcome-driven improvement.
• Proven resource and risk management, including managing risks associated with service change and measuring outcomes to secure improvement.
• Able to demonstrate the use of evidence when decision making.
• Experience of measuring and evaluating outcomes in order to secure improvement.
• Able to produce and present high quality, accurate reports to boards, committees, and board meetings of the ICBs as required, ensuring accuracy and attention to detail. Deliver formal presentations as requested.

Qualifications
Essential

• Educated to degree level or equivalent
• Evidence of leadership development and the capability to perform at this level
• Evidence of continued professional development

Desirable

• Current professional registration (e.g., NMC or equivalent)
• Substantial post registration experience in clinical leadership and quality roles
• Postgraduate qualification in Leadership, Quality Improvement, or equivalent

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.

Employer details
Employer name: NHS Coventry & Warwickshire Integrated Care Board
Address: Parkside House, Quinton Road, Coventry, CV1 2NJ, United Kingdom
Employer's website:

Employer contact details
For questions about the job, contact:
Chief Nursing Officer
Kathryn Cobain (via Kathryn's PA)
View email address on meeveem.com