Amanda Pritchard is standing down as chief executive of NHS England, in a development that will shock the health service.
Her departure from the top job follows recent meetings she held with Wes Streeting, the health secretary, to discuss his plans to overhaul the service and her own future role.
Her meeting with Streeting on Monday proved pivotal. Well-placed sources say her exit after three and a half years in the post is amicable and that she has not been forced out.
It will be confirmed in an official announcement on Tuesday afternoon, which is expected to portray her stepping down as a voluntary decision after much consideration.
It comes less than a month after two influential House of Commons committees made unusual criticisms of her suitability to lead the NHS through a period of what Streeting and Keir Starmer have said will be the biggest overhaul since the service’s creation in 1948.
The public accounts committee said that Pritchard, her deputy, Julian Kelly, and two senior civil servants at the Department of Health and Social Care were “complacent” and lacked dynamism.
Barely 12 hours later, MPs on the health and social care committee went public with their doubts about Pritchard shortly after she had given two hours of evidence to them.
Streeting denied he had asked Pritchard to step down. Speaking at an event at Apple’s headquarters in London, he said: “No, I have so much respect and time for Amanda Pritchard. I’ve loved working with Amanda Pritchard for nearly eight months now, since I became health and social care secretary. She’s given me wise counsel, she’s led the NHS from the front … over the last more than half a decade now.”
The health secretary was effusive in his praise for Jim Mackey, her interim successor, lauding him as “a brilliant, reforming health leader who will help lead the NHS into this exciting new era”.
Pritchard will stay in post until April before Mackey, who is widely admired in the NHS, takes over. Many senior figures in the service expect that Mackey, the chief executive of the Newcastle upon Tyne hospitals NHS trust, would get the job permanently if he wanted it.
Pritchard said her resignation had been a “hugely difficult” decision but would enable her successor to help deliver the government’s forthcoming 10-year NHS plan.
In what may be seen as a riposte to the two parliamentary committees, Pritchard stressed the NHS’s record of delivering changes that had improved patient care since she took over in 2021.
She added pointedly: “The NHS has achieved a great deal in the face of historic pressure thanks to a relentless focus on innovation and reform.”
She cited the service’s creation of a network of community diagnostic centres, development of cancer vaccines and success in getting millions of people to use the NHS app. “The NHS now feels very different to when I became chief executive over three and a half years ago.”
Streeting said Pritchard “has led with integrity and unwavering commitment” and “can be enormously proud of” her role in leading the NHS through much of the Covid pandemic. But his remarks may be seen as a signal that he wanted a more dynamic chief executive.
Mackey would provide “new leadership for a new era for the NHS. He knows the NHS inside out, can see how it needs to change and will work with the speed and urgency we need.”
The 10-year plan and start of the new financial year would be “pivotal moments on the road to reform”. He added: “We will also require a new relationship between the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England.”
Immediately after the two committees’ criticisms of Pritchard, the Department of Health and Social Care maintained that Streeting still had full confidence in her. However, behind the scenes they began talks that have culminated in her departure.
Since becoming the health secretary in July, Streeting has sought to assert more control over NHS England to help him drive through his promised “three big shifts” in how the service operates. He has ousted Richard Meddings as the organisation’s chair and appointed as his successor Dr Penny Dash, a doctor and chair of the north-west London NHS integrated care board, who shares his zeal for reforming the service.
He has also appointed Alan Milburn, who was health secretary under Tony Blair from 1999 to 2003, as the health department’s lead non-executive director.
Streeting is under intense pressure to fulfil Labour’s pledge to “fix” the NHS, restore treatment waiting times, and make the service more community-based and more focused on prevention.
Opinion polls consistently show that getting the NHS back on its feet is the public’s top priority.
