Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust
Business Manager
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Job Overview
We are looking for an experienced and motivated Business Manager to join the Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL) Talking Therapies service.
This is an exciting opportunity to support one of the largest Talking Therapies providers in England, delivering services across multiple London boroughs and Milton Keynes. You will work closely with clinical, operational and corporate colleagues to support service development, performance management, workforce planning and the delivery of improvement projects.
As Business Manager, you will play a key role in helping services respond to national priorities, improve patient outcomes and support the implementation of new ways of working, including digital innovation and service transformation.
Please note: This vacancy does not meet the criteria for Skilled Worker sponsorship, unless you meet the criteria by temporary exemption from current changes to immigration rules put in force on 22/07/2025. “Separate provisions are applied to workers who have been sponsored and held continuously Skilled Worker visa since prior to 04/04/2024."
As such, if you don’t meet the Transitional Provision (above) we are unable to consider your application unless you can provide documentary evidence of your right to work in the United Kingdom. If you believe you are eligible for sponsorship or already hold a valid right to work in the UK, please ensure you provide full details of your immigration status in the Pre-Screening Immigration section of your application form.
Please note role eligibility also depends on whether the role meets the salary threshold for the relevant occupational code (SOC CODE).
For further info please visit: Skilled Worker visa: Overview - GOV.UK
Main duties of the job
You will be responsible for:
- Supporting the delivery of strategic and operational objectives across Talking Therapies services
- Leading business planning, reporting and performance monitoring activities
- Coordinating service improvement and transformation projects
- Supporting business cases, funding bids, contracts and programme delivery
- Analysing and presenting performance, workforce and financial information
- Working with clinical and operational leads to identify opportunities for improvement
- Supporting the implementation of digital technologies and innovation projects
- Developing governance, reporting and assurance processes
- Building effective relationships with internal and external stakeholders
The post-holder will be required to use project management tools and techniques to support the project's effective delivery, including ensuring effective communication with key stakeholders, both within and potentially outside of the organisation.
- Ensuring projects are delivered to agreed timescales and quality standards
- Provide confidential administrative and diary management support to the Strategic Clinical Lead for Talking Therapies, ensuring effective scheduling, coordination of meetings, and management of key communications.
- Support the preparation of papers, agendas, action logs and other documentation required for Trust-wide governance and programme meetings.
Working for our organisation
CNWL Talking Therapies is a large and diverse portfolio of services working across multiple boroughs and local systems. The service is focused on delivering national and local Talking Therapies priorities, improving outcomes, reducing variation, strengthening pathways and addressing health inequalities.
This role offers the opportunity to work across a Trust-wide Talking Therapies portfolio and contribute to high-profile service improvement, transformation and digital innovation priorities. The post-holder will work closely with senior clinical, operational, performance, BI, workforce, finance, digital and external partner colleagues to support safe, effective and sustainable service delivery.
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The role will suit someone who can work autonomously, manage competing priorities, build trust across different professional groups and translate complex information into clear plans, briefings and actions.
This section is based on the JD’s description of the service-wide role, key relationships, transformation focus, and requirement to work across CNWL Talking Therapies services and partner sites.
Detailed Job Description And Main Responsibilities
This section reflects the JD’s national plan and performance improvement responsibilities.
National plan delivery and performance improvement
- Support CNWL Talking Therapies services to deliver agreed national and local targets, including completed courses of treatment, reliable recovery, reliable improvement and waiting time standards.
- Work with clinical, operational, BI and performance colleagues to identify the drivers of underperformance and translate intelligence into clear improvement actions.
- Support preparation of service improvement narratives, exception reports, recovery plans and committee updates where performance risks are identified.
- Maintain a clear focus on delivery of national plan trajectories and the shift from access-focused metrics to completed treatment, outcomes and flow.
Service-wide transformation and improvement delivery
- Lead or coordinate agreed transformation priorities across CNWL Talking Therapies.
- Ensure delivery plans are realistic, clinically safe and operationally workable.
- Support quality improvement activity linked to KPI realignment, prevalence-based planning, activity allocation, budget alignment and service-wide delivery priorities.
- Coordinate cross-borough improvement work where issues cannot be resolved within a single service.
- Support service changes to become embedded into business-as-usual practice, with clear governance, communication and follow-up.
This section reflects the JD’s transformation and improvement delivery responsibilities.
This section reflects the JD’s workforce, capacity and demand planning responsibilities.
Workforce, capacity and demand planning
- Support the development and implementation of sustainable workforce models across CNWL Talking Therapies.
- Contribute to planning for trainee expansion, post-qualification workforce needs and cross-borough workforce distribution where agreed.
- Work with workforce, finance, performance and service leads to ensure demand and capacity modelling informs service planning and improvement activity.
- Identify risks where workforce, capacity, space or infrastructure constraints may affect delivery of national targets.
This section reflects the JD’s pathway improvement and integration responsibilities.
Pathway improvement and integration
- Lead or support improvement activity at key service interfaces, including primary care, PCNs, secondary mental health, long-term condition pathways, VCSE and community partners.
- Improve referral pathways, triage, transitions and shared working arrangements that affect access, flow, conversion to treatment and recovery outcomes.
- Represent CNWL Talking Therapies in relevant partnership forums where service improvement, integration, access or pathway issues are discussed.
- Support targeted work with boroughs where referral patterns, complexity or pathway issues affect activity, recovery or completed treatment performance.
This section reflects the JD’s digital, data-enabled improvement and benefits realisation responsibilities.
Digital, data-enabled improvement and benefits realisation
- Support the pilot, implementation and evaluation of digital initiatives, including digital front door developments, IAPTus Insights, AI-enabled tools, dashboards and related service changes.
- Work with BI and digital colleagues to ensure data products support service improvement, decision-making and benefits realisation, without duplicating routine BI functions.
- Use performance and outcome data to support improvement conversations, identify unwarranted variation and monitor the impact of agreed actions.
- Support benefits tracking for transformation programmes, including access, drop-out, waiting times, recovery, inequalities and productivity indicators.
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This section reflects the JD’s health inequalities, patient voice and co-production responsibilities.
Health inequalities, patient voice and co-production
- Support services to use population health, equality and outcomes data to identify inequalities in access, engagement and outcomes.
- Embed patient and Expert by Experience feedback within improvement and transformation work.
- Work with services and partners to support outreach, community engagement and improved access for under-represented groups.
- Ensure improvement work considers digital exclusion, language, cultural accessibility and local population need.
This section reflects the JD’s governance, assurance and stakeholder management responsibilities.
Governance, assurance and stakeholder management
- Provide clear and concise updates on progress, risks, issues and dependencies to agreed governance forums.
- Maintain proportionate documentation, delivery plans, risk logs and action trackers for workstreams within scope.
- Work with clinical and operational leaders to ensure improvement plans are owned locally while maintaining service-wide consistency where required.
- Escalate risks that could affect safe delivery, performance, workforce expansion, digital implementation or national plan delivery.
- Contribute to business cases, service plans, board papers, briefings and assurance reports where required.
Person specification
Experience
Essential criteria
- Significant experience of successfully operating in a politically sensitive environment
- Evidence of continued professional development
- Demonstrated experience of coordinating projects in complex and challenging environments
- Experience of managing risks and reporting
- Experience of drafting briefing papers and correspondence at SMT level
Desirable criteria
- Comprehensive knowledge of project principles, techniques and project management tools, such as Prince 2 Foundation and Microsoft Project
Education And Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Educated to Masters degree level in relevant subject or equivalent level qualification or significant experience of working at a similar level in specialist area
Desirable criteria
- Post-graduate degree in Management Studies or equivalent
Skills and knowledge
Essential criteria
- Ability to prepare and produce concise yet insightful communications for dissemination to senior stakeholders and a broad range of stakeholders as required
- Experience of creating and giving presentations to a varied group of internal and external stakeholders
- Ability to analyse very complex issues where material is conflicting and drawn from multiple sources.
- Demonstrated capability to act upon incomplete information, using experience to make inferences and decision making
- Numerate and able to understand complex financial issues combined with deep analytical skills
- Demonstrated capability to plan over short, medium and long -term timeframes and adjust plans and resource requirements accordingly
- Experience of setting up and implementing internal processes and procedures.
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