London’s NHS employs approximately three thousand staff in finance roles across 41 organisations. These staff work in operational, managerial, and strategic roles in a diverse range of organisational settings such as acute, mental health, community and ambulance providers, arms-length bodies, regulators, clinical commissioning groups and commissioning support units. By working collaboratively with staff across all organisations and grades, and bringing together our senior leadership, we want to strive to make improvements across the finance function and deliver the National Strategies in line with our vision:

To create, develop and support a leading NHS finance community for London that reflects the population we serve and supports the delivery of the London vision.

The new London Finance Development Board has been formed to provide oversight of how the national strategy is delivered and will ensure cohesion between delivery partners and networks. The Board has agreed the following objectives for the next 5 years which build upon the objectives outlined in the National Strategy and ED&I action plan. They also consider the feedback from the research that was carried out in the initial development of the London Finance Academy:

▪ To ensure finance has a diverse workforce at Bands 8c and above, that is representative of the populations we serve.
▪ To build more inclusive cultures in our finance departments, improve our recruitment and secondment processes.
▪ Ensure finance staff are supported at all levels and have equal access to support through a variety of opportunities that will aid with career progression, building their professional networks, and to help call out and deal with discriminatory behaviours they or their colleagues may face.
▪ Take an inclusive and consistent approach to nurturing talent to allow people to fulfil their potential, supporting people to develop plans on navigating their way to achieve success in the areas important to them.
▪ Work as ‘One NHS Finance’ function across London, collaborating across organisations, systems and nationally to share knowledge, ideas, innovation, experiences and learning.