Our annual business plan supports the delivery of our strategy year-on-year. The NHSCFA has a framework underpinning its business planning cycle and subsequent performance management and delivery assurance. Quarterly strategic accountability meetings with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), attended by the NHSCFA’s chair and chief executive officer, provide an opportunity to discuss progress against our objectives and targets.
Our strategy sets out our direction in line with the delivery of the strategic pillars of the organisation. Delivery of these is discharged through this business plan. The plan is then supported by divisional and unit business plans to ensure a golden thread and alignment across the organisation’s plans. This plan will be actively managed and monitored through a robust performance management framework, with at least monthly consideration of performance at Executive, Senior Management Team, Leadership and unit-level performance reporting.
NHSCFA Board level performance reporting will take place on a quarterly basis together with a portfolio report on the delivery of our key projects and programmes. The transparency of our board reporting is underpinned by quarterly Performance and Assurance Panels, where delivery and performance across the entire organisation is reviewed by the panel with associated metrics to demonstrate impact and value to counter fraud.
The heads of service for each division, along with their management teams, actively engage in this process of delivery assurance and mitigation. The panels are chaired by the director of performance and improvement, who directly escalates any key issues, concerns, or risks to the Senior Management Team (SMT), chief executive officer and board secretary. Escalated delivery and performance risks are considered by the SMT in the first instance. The mitigations against these and all other strategic risks are regularly reviewed as part of our risk management framework and are reported to the ARAC.