Programme Manager

Working as a partnership, both Isle of Wight NHS Trust and Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust have a shared vision for excellence in care for our patients and communities; with a set of strategic aims underpinning how we will achieve this.

The single corporate service is delivered across both organisation. You may be based at either IWT or PHU and individuals may be required to undertake business travel between sites. For leaders managing staff across multi-site locations, you will need to be visible and provide in person leadership. The arrangements and frequency will be agreed locally.

NHS Band 8a Salary: £57,528 - £64,750 per annum

Hours per Week: Full time 37.5 hrs

Contract type: Permanent

This vacancy is open to employees of Isle of Wight NHS Trust and Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust only.

An exciting opportunity has arisen for an experienced and highly motivated Programme Manager to join our Strategy Team.

Working across Planning, Strategy Deployment and Service Transformation, you will lead and support the delivery of key strategic programmes that contribute to achieving our Trust vision, strategic objectives and True North ambitions.

You will work closely with Executive and Leadership Teams to manage complex programmes of work, establish effective governance arrangements, oversee risks and programme controls, and ensure benefits are realised. Using recognised programme and change management approaches, including Delivering Excellence, you will help drive sustainable improvements across the organisation.

To work directly with key stakeholders across both the Isle of Wight NHS Trust and Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust.

The successful candidate will have excellent programme management, stakeholder engagement and organisational skills, with experience of delivering complex change programmes within a large organisation.

If you are passionate about transformation and making a real difference to patient care and organisational performance, we would love to hear from you.

Job summary

• To have responsibility for specific areas of the Trust business across the strategy functions, which may include:
• Overseeing the development & implementation of the annual (and long term) plans for both Trusts, aligned to the organisational priorities.
• Providing the framework for the Trust strategies to be deployed, delivered, and connected throughout both Trusts.
• Providing transformation and programme management expertise to the Trusts on aligned agreed priorities.
• Providing benefits realisation expertise and oversight, aligned to the Trusts’ Business Case process.

• Support the development of an effective Programme Office as an agent for organisational and cultural change, driving delivery to support the operational and strategic objectives of both Isle of Wight NHS Trust and Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust.

You will be expected to:

• Establish and maintain arrangements to monitor and report on Trust performance in its delivery of programmes of work (whether that be through our strategy deployment approach or other)
• Facilitate resolution of strategic issues and workstream interdependencies that are hindering progress in programme delivery.
• Ensure workstream leads and senior reporting officers receive robust, timely programme management information to appraise them of progress and inform their decision-making.
• Lead the evaluation of projects/programmes to assess the impact of the change and its benefits. Including developing and maintaining Programme Level Risk Logs (Risks, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies)

Please see attached Job description for full details.

Essential

Educated to degree level or equivalent level of experience of working at a senior level in a specialist area. One or more of the below programme/project management qualifications or equivalent level of experience for example:

• Prince 2
• Managing Successful Programmes
• Project Management Institute

Evidence of continuing professional development

Desirable

• Trained in service improvement methodologies with significant experience in the application of learning in practice

Experience

Essential

• Significant experience of managing or supporting large scale projects and programmes, delivering them within agreed timescales and budgets.
• Proven track record of successful and sustained change management in an NHS Trust or similar public sector organisation. Working with different corporate and service-level function to achieve this.
• Significant complex programme management experience.
• Extensive experience of identifying and interpreting national policy.
• Experience of working at a senior level in a corporate team environment
• Significant experience of managing people and teams and working in a matrix style approach
• Well-developed communication skills, both verbal and written, with the ability to communicate and influence at all levels, from internal to local and national.
• Able to clarify key points from diverse and complex sets of information.
• Experience of being able to draw highly complex qualitative and quantitative information from a range of sources and present it concisely.
• Ability to effectively plan and think strategically and analyse and resolve problems in a multidisciplinary environment
• Strong planning and coordination skills in a complex and rapidly changing environment.
• Experience of being able to anticipate problems before they arise and offer solutions
• Demonstrate the ability to plan over the short, medium and long-term altering plans to fit with the rapidly changing environment.
• Experience of being able to provide and receive highly complex information and develop clear and concise reports.
• Track record in writing high-quality reports and presentation material.

The health and wellbeing of our staff is at the forefront of everything we do. We are proud to be able to offer our staff some fantastic benefits including our on-site Nursery, access to our free Beach Hut for those long summer days, our on-site Wellness Centre including a gym and a swimming pool, access to our fantastic staff networks including LGBTQ, Race Equality and DisAbility, and awards ceremonies to recognise your achievements. We believe we can offer support to all of our staff when they need it the most.

We welcome the unique contributions that you can bring in terms of your education, opinions, culture, ethnicity, race, sex, gender identity and expression, nation of origin, age, languages spoken, veteran’s status, colour, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and beliefs.

For more information, please see our People and OD Strategy 2026

Smoke Free Policy:

All of our hospitals operate a strict no smoking policy. Smoking cigarettes or tobacco products is not allowed on any of the grounds or in any of the buildings run by us. This applies to patients, staff, carers and visitors to Trust premises.

Our goal is to improve the health and wellbeing of everyone we care for and, by making sure that our NHS services are smoke-free, we benefit the health of people who use our services as well as the health of the people who work for us.