Planning and Assurance Manager

As a Planning and Assurance Manager, you will play a pivotal role in shaping, coordinating, and assuring delivery across the Blood Supply and Plasma for Medicines portfolio. You will design and lead governance, reporting and performance frameworks that give senior leaders the insight they need to make confident, timely decisions. Working closely with the Head of Portfolio, youll translate strategic priorities into actionable plans, provide expert analysis, and ensure that risks, resources, and benefits are clearly understood at every level.

This is a highly influential position where your leadership, collaboration skills and ability to bring clarity to complex information will directly support the safe, efficient and effective delivery of services that help save and improve lives.

In this role you will be responsible for:

• Leading the design and operation of portfolio governance and assurance frameworks, ensuring compliance with NHSBT and CPMO standards.
• Overseeing the collection, analysis and reporting of delivery, risk, benefits and performance data.
• Providing authoritative insight and advice to senior leaders on delivery confidence, risk exposure and resource constraints.
• Establish and run portfolio level decision forums, including change boards and review boards.
• Leading portfolio assurance activity, including health checks, deep dives and readiness reviews.
• Line managing the Planning and Assurance team, building capability in governance, reporting and analysis.

It takes all types of people to deliver the kind of service that saves and improves lives. At NHS Blood and Transplant, youll join a team of more than 6,000 people who are making a genuine difference to communities, families, friends, relatives and more across the UK. We play a unique and special role in the NHS by helping people do something extraordinary- donate blood, blood products, organs, tissues, or stem cells to save someone in need.

Our three core values are what set us apart. They guide and inspire everything we do.

By being caring, expertly meeting the needs of our patients and our people, and accepting nothing less than the best quality, we can do extraordinary work and help our people to do something extraordinary in their career, too. Three small words, one big difference - Caring, Expert and Quality. Together we'll save and improve more lives than ever.

You will join us on our journey to create an inclusive workplace and aim to reflect the diverse communities we work with, and we positively encourage applications from all sectors of the community.

To learn more, please see our recruitment profile, which provides a summary of the job description and person specification. This can be accessed via the link below, or by clicking ‘Apply’ if you are viewing this advert on another site.

• Educated to Masters in a relevant subject or equivalent experience at a similar level.
• Evidence of continuing professional development.

• Significant experience operating a PMO supporting complex or transformational programmes.
• Proven ability to manage governance processes, reporting cycles, and programme controls.
• Experience in resource monitoring and budget tracking.
• Experience producing high-quality reports and dashboards for senior stakeholders.
• In-depth understanding of programme and project management methodologies (PRINCE2, P3O).
• Knowledge of governance frameworks and assurance processes.
• Familiarity with NHSBT transformation programmes and CPMO standards.
• Experience in benefits realisation tracking and post-implementation reviews.
• Experience of line-managing PMO Administrators/Coordinators or leading a PMO function.
• Experience conducting or supporting programme assurance reviews (e.g., quality checks, health checks).
• Experience in developing PMO tools, templates, and process improvements.
• Experience in supplier coordination and contract governance.
• Knowledge of benefits management and dependency planning.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.