Publish date: 8 July 2025
The Trust recently welcomed a new chair, David Wakefield, who will work jointly across both Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care and Stockport NHS Foundation Trusts.
We met with David to discuss how he is settling into his new role, and the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.
How are you finding it so far?
“Well, I officially started on the 1st of April,” David explains, “although after my appointment I got involved during March. That was manic because we were going through the business plan round, so there were two trusts putting in two plans at the same time as my old trust, which was still in Staffordshire.”
Since officially starting his new role, David has been spending time getting out to meet his new colleagues across different departments.
“Every time I come on site, I try and visit four or five, six departments. I just pop in and see if they've got time to talk to me. Some of them might only be five minutes. One of them was an hour and a half.”
In summary, he says, “There's always something new on the agenda. It's been challenging, but very enjoyable.”
Tell us about the role of chair. How will your position as joint chair with Stockport be different?
David laughs, “Whenever I tell people that I’m a chair, they say, what? What does the chair do?
“And what I say to people is: we have a board of directors made up of non-executives, including me, and a number of executive directors. So, as the board, we have to make sure that the strategy for the organisation has been fixed so we know where we're going. We set the vision and the goals.
“We also agree what kind of behaviours we want, the culture we want. We set the ground rules in line with national NHS expectations. And then we say to Karen James and the executive team, ‘Off you go!’. Their role is to deliver it. We hold them to account for that.”
While other senior leadership positions were already shared across Tameside and Glossop and Stockport, this is the first time that the two trusts have shared a joint chair.
“It’s very different because I'm going to have to get collaboration across the two trusts, not just because it's a nice thing to do, but it's essential,” David explains.
“When you look at some of the other Greater Manchester trusts, individually we’re minuscule. But when we combine ourselves as an entity, we're nearly £1 billion. And that gives us the opportunity to do more.
“We've clearly got to improve efficiency and take a lot of costs out and start reducing the deficits in both Trusts. Collaborating across the two organisations will enable us to create efficiencies and use our limited resources more effectively whilst improving clinical pathways. And then hopefully the patients will see the difference.”
What opportunities and challenges have you identified so far?
David says his biggest challenge will be the timescale at which the trusts must implement new initiatives and improvements.
“There's a lot we have to do. I have a list of things we want to do, and we need to do them at pace.
“Let me start with the obvious. I think if we were to invest more in renewing and updating some of some of the equipment, we could do a lot better. So, there is a challenge around dealing with the infrastructure and getting the capital for updated equipment.”
Another challenge for Tameside and Glossop is the growing number of patients who have multiple long-term health conditions.
“They’re more ill than they were pre-COVID,” says David, “and that puts demands on the team here.
“The other big issue we've got is we find it hard to stop people attending the hospital when it’s not necessarily the most appropriate pathway for them. Because, particularly in Tameside relative to other trusts in the northwest, it doesn't have the same proportion of GPs available. So some people think, ‘Well, I can wait 2 or 3 weeks to see the GP, or I can wait for 4 to 8 hours in A&E’. The challenge really is to find a way of working with our partners and boosting our community services to avoid this.”
Tell us about your career journey so far. What have you done previously?
David was born and educated in Dublin before moving over to Leeds, where he studied business and trained to be an accountant.
“I spent the first ten years of my career in the furniture trade. I absolutely loved it. But then the Royal Mail group started advertising for accountants, so I went to work for them. I got promoted fairly quickly, and then I spent not quite 30 years… 27, 28 years with them.
“I moved out of finance as soon as I could, I went into operations. I ended up in sales, which I loved, dealing with all the big companies, and then I worked as a commercial finance director.”
But when his father-in-law had a poor experience in hospital, David decided to get involved in the NHS, wanting to improve the quality of care he had witnessed.
“They were advertising for non-executive directors in the NHS in Milton Keynes. I thought I'm going to apply. So I did and I got it. And within a year or so, they asked me to become Chair of Milton Keynes Community Providers.”
A few years later, David was offered the position of Chair of Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Subsequent chairmanships at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust followed.
“My term there would have been up next year,” David says, “but I was contacted to say they were looking for a joint chair. I thought the challenge of the two trusts was one I couldn't give up.”
On top of all this, David also served on the board of several other organisations including, board member of the education regulator Ofqual, chair of a school academy, and eight years working with the Cabinet Office as a non-executive director with Crown Commercial Services. He is also currently a director of a local woodland charity. David says he will bring learnings from other roles to his new position.
“People say you're a product of your experiences, and there is no doubt you are. I've learned little bits as I've gone along. What works here, what works there, what doesn't work, you know, and just the way you approach it.”
What are your hobbies outside of work?
When he’s not working, David can often be found walking his dog, a cross between a beagle and a labrador.
“I like to get out four times a day,” he says, “and I try and get in between 10 to 20,000 steps in a day and that means very early starts and late night walks!
“When I'm walking the dog, I always listen to podcasts. I've just almost finished listening to one on the Titanic. I picked it up randomly and I didn't realise that, so far, it's been 12 one-hour podcasts. 12 hours of it. And it's fascinating. Anyway, I like comedies and I like documentaries, that kind of stuff.
And I'm a fairly big reader. In the evenings I walk the dog, get home, go to bed, and I'll read for 20 minutes or half an hour, turn the light out and I'm gone.”
But above all, David enjoys spending time with his grandchildren.
“We take them on holiday at least twice a year and they come round regularly. We do Sunday dinner for them all the time and they come round for tea once a week. We're big on family.”
What are you most looking forward to?
“What I'm looking forward to is making sure that the two trusts can be the best that they can be,” David says, “and to do that, I need to get rid of the barriers that stop people being the best version of themselves and get them to work together.
“The NHS is in a very different place than it was a few years ago and we have to take some actions.
But I think we've got the board to do it.”
