Job summary
- Main area
- Midwifery
- Grade
- Band 8a
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time - 37.5 hours per week
- Job ref
- 438-PB4582
- Employer
- Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Royal Preston Hospital
- Town
- Preston
- Salary
- £57,528 - £64,750 per annum, pro rata
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 23/07/2026 23:59
- Interview date
- 04/08/2026
Employer heading
Divisional Governance Lead Maternity and Neonatal
Band 8a
Job overview
Are you passionate about improving quality and safety in midwifery? We are looking for an exceptional midwife with a proven track record working within a safety and quality portfolio who can provide clinical oversight and leadership as the divisional governance lead for maternity and neonatal
You will lead on the coordination of serious incidents, complaints, and audit, ensuring learning is embedded into practice and aligned with national priorities including Ockenden, National reports, the NHS Patient Safety Strategy, and Maternity Incentive Scheme and MBRRACE UK. Working closely with multidisciplinary teams and system partners, you will be responsible for oversight of governance frameworks, support assurance processes, and promote a culture of safety and continuous improvement.
We are looking for a highly motivated midwife with existing strong governance experience, excellent analytical skills, and a proven ability to lead a team, influence practice and deliver change at pace.
This multifaceted role demands exceptional leadership, communication, and influencing skills, with the ability to work across multidisciplinary teams and deliver assurance at the highest level. The postholder will champion governance excellence, foster collaboration, and ensure that systems and processes underpin the delivery of safe, effective, and harm-free care.
Main duties of the job
This is a highly visible and influential leadership role that provides strategic and operational governance support across the Division with a focus on Maternity and Neonatal services. The Divisional Governance Lead will act as a key driver for patient safety, quality improvement, and regulatory compliance, ensuring that governance systems are robust, responsive, and aligned with national standards and Trust policy.
The purpose of the role is to provide strategic leadership and oversight of the divisional governance agenda in relation to the Maternity and Neonatal portfolio, ensuring compliance with Trust policies, national standards, and NHS frameworks. Manage the Maternity and Neonatal governance team; drive patient safety, learning, and ensure that improvement actions are undertaken and that assurance of actions being embedded are evident through audit assurance processes; and enable high-quality care through effective incident response, risk management, compliance, and culture.
The postholder will oversee incident profiles and serious incidents, providing escalation and thematic reviews to the Divisional Management Team and ensuring lessons learned are embedded into practice. They will lead divisional learning responses relating to Maternity and Neonatal services under the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF), ensuring investigations are robust and outcomes shared to improve care delivery.
Working for our organisation
Our mission is to provide excellent care with compassion.
We have three equally important strategic aims – to provide outstanding healthcare to our local communities, to offer a range of high quality specialised services to patients in Lancashire and South Cumbria, and to drive innovation through world-class education, training and research.
We are constantly striving to improve, and working towards becoming an outstanding, high performing organisation.
Our values define who we are and how we behave.
- Caring and compassionate. We treat everyone with dignity and respect, doing everything we can to show we care.
- Recognising individuality. We respect, value and respond to every person’s individual needs.
- Seeking to involve. We will always involve you in making decisions about your care and treatment, and are always open and honest.
- Team working. We work together as one team, and involve patients, families, and other services, to provide the best care possible.
- Taking personal responsibility. We each take personal responsibility to give the highest standards of care and deliver a service we can always be proud of.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Please see Job description and person specification for details of the role role and responsibilities.
Risk management will form a key part of the role, with responsibility for maintaining and scrutinizing the relevant aspects of the divisional risk register, validating new risks, ensuring controls and assurances are documented, and escalating significant risks to senior leadership. The role also includes ensuring regulatory compliance, acting as the divisional lead for Care Quality Commission (CQC) requirements, maintaining inspection readiness, coordinating responses to enquiries, and monitoring action plans.
The Divisional Governance Lead for Maternity and Neonatal services will provide oversight of audit and clinical effectiveness processes, ensuring NICE guidance responses and audit findings are tracked and reported through governance structures. Safeguarding responsibilities include monitoring incidents, collaborating with the Safeguarding Team, participating in Section 42 reviews, and providing assurance to governance forums.
In addition, the postholder will act as a trusted advisor for workforce investigations and managing allegations, ensuring fair and transparent processes, supporting managers, and contributing to lessons learned reviews. They will also coordinate divisional responses to clinical claims, disseminate learning, and oversee safety alerts to ensure timely review, dissemination, and action tracking.
Finally, the role includes leadership and management of the Maternity and Neonatal governance team, encompassing recruitment, on boarding, appraisals, training compliance, and performance management, while fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Appropriate NMC registration
- Degree in Midwifery
- Evidence of post registration qualification
- Evidence of management/leadership qualification
Desirable criteria
- Educated to/working towards master’s degree level and display master’s level thinking and decision making
- PMA qualification
- Qualification relating to governance
Knowledge & Experience
Essential criteria
- An in-depth understanding of all aspects of evidence-based midwifery practice.
- Ability to demonstrate knowledge of governance processes within maternity services
- Able to demonstrate significant personal involvement in change management
- An understanding of confidentiality issues
- Relevant recent experience encompassing a wide range of midwifery experience.
- Demonstrable experience of developing and implementing new systems
- Experience of staff management, support, and supervision
- Able to demonstrate an understanding of the national vision for maternity services and the wider health service
- Able to demonstrate commitment to continuous improvement
- Experience of conflict management
- Ability to design and develop support programmes and engagement plans, evaluation, and monitoring of plans
- Evidence of guideline development, research, and audit experience
- Experience and knowledge of the NHSR processes
- Experience and knowledge of PMRT and HSIB
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Applicant requirements
You must have appropriate UK professional registration.
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Jo Lambert
- Job title
- Deputy Divisional Midwifery and Nursing Director
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 01772 528327
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