Thank you for your interest in North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT).
As of 1 April 2026, NLFT has formally merged with Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust—marking the start of an exciting new chapter. This is a unique opportunity to join a forward-thinking organisation at a time of transformation, where we are strengthening access to mental health services, responding more effectively to complex and specialist needs, and advancing our work in education, research and innovation.
By bringing together our combined expertise, we are building a stronger, more collaborative Trust—one that delivers consistent, high-quality care and improved outcomes for the diverse communities we serve.
At the heart of our approach is The North London Way. We are committed to:
- Working collaboratively at every level, guided by our shared values
- Shaping a positive, inclusive culture where staff and service users thrive
- Empowering our teams with the skills, tools and autonomy to drive meaningful change
- Delivering excellence and continuously improving the quality of care we provide
- Embedding research, innovation and technology across our services
- Taking a trauma-informed approach in everything we do
We are proud to be an inclusive employer that values diversity. We actively welcome applicants from all backgrounds, particularly from our local communities, and are committed to creating opportunities for everyone—including apprentices, veterans and care leavers.
The North London Way to deliver: Better Mental Health, Better Lives, Better Communities.
Our trust website is: https://www.northlondonmentalhealth.nhs.uk/
As a values‑driven Trust, we recruit through our values. Our selection processes focus on behaviours, attitudes, and examples that reflect our organisational values and commitment to compassionate, high‑quality care.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a set of technology that can perform various tasks that typically required human intelligence. Your application is your opportunity to demonstrate to us how you meet the requirements of the role.
We recognise that AI tools can support accessibility, equity and confidence for applicants. However, it’s important that examples and responses genuinely reflect your own experience and abilities, as these will be explored further during the selection process. AI must not be used to provide misleading or false information during any stage of the application journey.
Further guidance can be found in the NLPSS Applicant Toolkit https://royalfree.pagetiger.com/cuuomnr/1.
North London NHS Foundation Trust is committed to ensuring that its recruitment processes are carried out with integrity, transparency, and fairness for all applicants. To help maintain these standards, we ask candidates to provide accurate and truthful information throughout the recruitment process.
If incorrect or misleading information is identified, this may affect the progression of an application, any employment offer, or continued employment. As part of our due diligence, the company may verify the information provided by applicants and take appropriate action where necessary.
We do not charge applicants any fees at any stage of the recruitment process, including applications, interviews, sponsorship arrangements, pre-employment checks, or employment offers. All vacancies are advertised through TRAC/NHS Jobs and candidates are assessed solely on their skills, qualifications, experience, and suitability for the role. If you are asked to make a payment in connection with an NHS job opportunity, please treat this as suspicious and contact the organisation directly using the details published on our official career's website.
Applicants can refer to the Fraud Act 2006 for further information: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/contents
Job overview
Are you an experienced healthcare leader passionate about clinical governance, evidence-based practice and improving the quality of care?
We have an exciting opportunity for an Associate Director of Clinical Governance & Effectiveness to join the senior Nursing Directorate leadership team at North London NHS Foundation Trust.
We are seeking an exceptional senior healthcare leader to join North London NHS Foundation Trust. This newly created Band 8c role provides a unique opportunity to shape our Trust-wide approach to clinical governance, clinical audit & effectiveness, quality intelligence and regulatory assurance, ensuring that evidence and learning are translated into measurable improvements in the quality of care.
Reporting to the Deputy Chief Nursing Officer, this newly created Trust-wide role will provide strategic leadership for clinical governance, clinical audit, clinical effectiveness, quality intelligence and regulatory assurance.
You will lead the development and delivery of our clinical governance and clinical effectiveness arrangements, ensuring that intelligence from clinical audit, incidents, complaints, patient experience, safeguarding, mortality, regulatory activity and other sources is brought together to identify emerging themes, risks and opportunities for improvement.
Advert
The role
Working with clinical, operational and corporate leads, you will:
· Lead the Trust's clinical governance and clinical effectiveness framework.
· Strengthen the triangulation of quality intelligence to support effective assurance, learning and improvement.
· Provide leadership for regulatory compliance and readiness, including CQC comprehensive assessment and reviews.
· Lead delivery of the Trust's Culture of Learning Framework on behalf of the DCNO, ensuring learning is translated into sustainable improvement.
· Provide clear, evidence-based quality and governance assurance to senior leaders, Executive committees and the Board
About you
You will be a registered healthcare professional with significant senior leadership experience in the NHS or a comparable healthcare setting.
You will bring substantial experience of clinical governance, clinical effectiveness, quality assurance and regulatory compliance, together with the ability to interpret complex quality information and translate it into clear priorities and action.
We are particularly looking for a leader who is credible, collaborative, curious and improvement-focused, with the confidence to provide constructive challenge, influence at senior level and build strong relationships across professional and organisational boundaries.
Working for our organisation
North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT) is committed to improving mental health care across North London to deliver excellent services to our local people.
Our Five-Year Strategy:
- We will provide consistently high-quality care closer to home.
- With our partners in North London and each borough we will ensure equity of outcome for all
- We will offer great places to work, providing staff with supportive environment to deliver outstanding care.
- We will be more effective as an organisation by pioneering research, quality improvement and technology.
Why NLFT?
- We develop and retain our staff through leadership behaviours and managers programme and many more opportunities.
- We promote flexible working and support staff with a range of health and wellbeing initiatives.
- NHS Discounts, generous annual leave and NHS pension scheme
- Excellent internal staff network
In order to meet the needs of the Trust you may be required from time to time to work at different locations to your normal place of work. This may mean that you are required to work at any location that fall under Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey or Islington. The Trust reserves the right to require staff to work at such other places or locations as it considers reasonable and necessary on a temporary or permanent basis.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Why join us?
This is an excellent opportunity to shape a newly created role and influence how we use governance, evidence and quality intelligence to improve care across North London NHS Foundation Trust.
If you are passionate about moving clinical governance beyond compliance and using evidence, learning and insight to make a measurable difference to patient care, we would be delighted to hear from you.
Join us and help ensure that evidence drives improvement, learning leads to change, and our governance arrangements support consistently high-quality care.
We reserve the right to close the advert earlier than advertised in the event that we receive a high volume of applications
Due to the high number of applications that are received for some posts, we reserve the right to close any vacancies before the stated closing date. Therefore, please ensure you apply without delay if you wish to be considered for this role.
In line with NHS protocols, only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview. We regret that it is not possible to contact all applicants for every vacancy. If you have not been contacted within 4 weeks of the closing date, please assume you have not been shortlisted for the next stage.
You must already have the right to work in the United Kingdom or fully meet the eligibility criteria for sponsorship under the Skilled Worker visa route. We welcome applications from candidates who require visa sponsorship; however, we can only consider these where all UKVI requirements are met. Before applying, please ensure that both you and the role satisfy the relevant UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) points‑based system criteria, as applications that do not meet these requirements cannot be progressed. For more information about the criteria, please click here
References will be required to cover your last 3 years of employment/training. One has to be from your current or most recent employer and the others from your previous employer. The references should be from persons with management responsibility or HR.
Please note, in order to progress your application your data will be processed by our 3rd party recruitment providers – North London Partners Shared Service, who conduct recruitment activities on behalf of North London NHS Foundation Trust. As part of pre-employment checks your identity and right to work documentation will be verified remotely (in most circumstances), using a certified identity verification service provider TrustID. You will be asked to capture an image of the relevant documents as well as a “selfie” using your smartphone/tablet (if available) for facial matching. TrustID will also perform a digital address check using Trunarrative and Equifax, which is a soft check and does not leave a footprint on your credit rating. For more information, visit www.trustid.co.uk
The Trust uses electronic new starter forms on Trac to collect personal details. Information collected is securely stored and used to set up the employee record on the ESR HR system.
We are an equal opportunities employer and are committed to creating an inclusive, fair, and supportive workplace for all. We actively welcome applications from individuals who are under‑represented within our workforce and are dedicated to eliminating discrimination in all its forms.
As a Disability Confident (Two Ticks) employer, we guarantee an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role and are committed to making reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process.
By applying for this role, you accept in the event you are successful that your personal data may be transferred from the Trust to another NHS organisation where your employment transfers within the NHS. This is in accordance with the streamlining programme which is aimed at improving efficiencies within the NHS both to make costs savings for NHS organisations but also to save you time when your employment transfers.