Welcome

Dear Candidate,

Thank you for taking the time to consider the role of Group Director of Estates and Facilities at Norfolk and Waveney University Hospitals Group.

This is a significant and timely Group-level appointment as we continue to implement our new operating model and shape how three acute hospital organisations work together for the benefit of patients, staff and communities across Norfolk and Waveney.

Our Group was formally established in May 2025, bringing together Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Trust, James Paget University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust under unified strategic leadership. Each organisation retains its own identity, local leadership and statutory responsibilities, but we are now working together with a shared ambition: to improve resilience, reduce unwarranted variation, strengthen services and deliver the best possible care for the communities we serve.

Estates and facilities will be central to that ambition.
The scale and complexity of this portfolio is significant. It includes three acute hospital sites, a large and varied estate, a substantial facilities workforce, a first-generation PFI contract at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, and two RAAC hospital sites at James Paget University Hospital and The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn. Both JPUH and QEH are part of the national New Hospital Programme, creating a once-in-a-generation opportunity to support major estate transformation across the region.
While dedicated programme leadership remains in place for the New Hospital Programme, the Group Director of Estates and Facilities will play a vital professional interface role, ensuring our operational estate, site-based priorities, facilities services and long-term estates strategy are aligned with the future direction of travel.

As a newly created Group role, this appointment offers the opportunity to shape the estates and facilities model from the outset.

We are looking for a senior leader who can help define what excellent estates and facilities leadership looks like across a Group of three hospitals. Someone who can bring clarity, confidence and professional grip, while recognising the different histories, pressures and opportunities across each site.

One of the first priorities will be the development of the Group’s first unified Estates and Facilities Strategy. This will need to support clinical priorities, operational resilience, statutory compliance, sustainability, capital planning and the long-term future of our estate. It will need to be ambitious, but also practical. Most importantly, it will need to bring people with it.

The successful candidate will work closely with me, the Group Executive Team, hospital site leaders and the three Deputy Directors of Estates and Facilities. As part of the Executive Team, they will provide professional advice and assurance as well as help ensure that estates and facilities are recognised not simply as support services, but as essential enablers of safe, resilient and high-quality care.

This will be a challenging role. It will require technical credibility, commercial judgement, resilience and the ability to operate across organisational boundaries. It will also require visible and collaborative leadership, because success will depend on building trust across all three hospitals.

It is also a hugely rewarding opportunity.

Few estates and facilities roles offer this combination of scale, complexity, strategic influence and long-term impact. This is a chance to help shape the future of healthcare infrastructure across Norfolk and Waveney, while supporting the staff and services that our patients rely on every day.

If you are excited by the opportunity to lead through complexity, build something new and make a lasting contribution to one of the NHS’s newest Group models, I would very much welcome your interest.

Yours sincerely,

Marcus Thorman
Group Chief Financial Officer and Deputy Chief Executive
Norfolk and Waveney University Hospitals Group