April 2025 One NHS Finance Team Updates
Welcome to the April One NHS Finance blog. Here you will find all the highlights of our programmes and networks over the last month and discover all the opportunities and everything else coming up in the month ahead.
Important Upcoming Dates That You Should Know
The UK 4 Nations Exchange Programme: Deadline to apply – Friday, April 4th.
Towards Excellence Accreditation: Submission deadline – Wednesday, April 30th.
Networks
Last month, regional Sponsee network meetings took place and the latest edition of the Sponsee newsletter was published, read it to find out the results of the recent Sponsorship survey, career journeys and much more: The National Sponsee Newsletter – March 2025.
A new health & wellbeing resource guide was published by The South West Regional Finance Academy on ‘How to recognise stress’. This valuable guide provides practical tips, wellbeing action plans and advice to support staff.
The Cultural Diversity Matters Network has published a resource guide all about what the network does and how you can be supported, and how to support colleagues from different cultural backgrounds. Read the guide here.
Coming up this month, we have a health and wellbeing webinar on April 29, 13:00 – 14:00 – We’re designed to move. This session explores the benefits of staying active and practical ways to move more every day. We also have two Value Maker showcase sessions, one on April 22 about encouraging NHS finance careers and one on April 30, 13:00 – 14:00 – Health & Wellbeing from The Christie Finance Team.
We also have a session from The National Rainbow Network taking place on April 29, 14:00 – 15:00, to coincide with Asexual Awareness Day earlier in April. This session aims to provide a deeper understanding of what it means to be asexual, explore the challenges faced by individuals within the asexual community, and offer valuable information to support inclusive practices in your workplace and beyond. Register here.
Programmes
Last month, we held a Culture Series webinar with London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust (LNWUH), this session explored their approach to fostering openness, inclusivity, and trust within their finance teams. Rewatch the session here.
We have been busy interviewing for The National Finance Leaders Talent Pool, with many now securing places on the programme. Applications will be opening again in September 2026.
We are currently in the process of updating our benchmarking tool for the 2024 NHS Staff Survey results for Finance Directorates. The list of organisations currently included in the sample can be found here. If your organisation does not appear, and you would like to be included, please send through your department’s results for each People Promise theme out of 10 to one.finance@nhs.net.
Don’t forget that the next Accreditation submission deadline is April 30! We have just published two new resources, access them here: ‘Reasons to get Accredited’ and ‘Reasons to become an Accreditation Assessor.’
The National Finance Academy are looking for volunteers to help review and update the NHS Finance Competencies, particularly in the areas of Costing, Capital Accounting, and Commissioning & Contracting. If you would like to get involved, please sign up to volunteer here.
We have another exciting future of finance event with Oli Deacon, a former Finance Director at Microsoft coming up on April 23: Process Redesign with AI – This workshop will be led by Oli Deacon, a former Finance Director at Microsoft who empowers finance teams with the skills they need to thrive in the future of finance.
Taking place this month on April 30, 11:00 – 12:00, we have a session all about Access Accountancy, gain insights into how Access Accountancy works, its impact on aspiring accountants from diverse backgrounds, and how NHS finance teams can actively support and benefit from the initiative. Register here.
We still need more volunteers to test our brand-new NHS Finance Innovation Library AI tool! If you want to get involved click here.
That’s a wrap for this month, please download our monthly presentation slides below. Thank you for reading.