Group Director of Strategy at Barts Health NHS Trust to join 'Future hospital and R&D campus' forum

Above: Ann Hepworth - courtesy Barts Health NHS Trust

We are delighted to that Ann Hepworth, Director of Strategy and Partnerships at Barts Health group of hospitals, is to join Future Cities Forum's 'Future hospital and health sciences R&D campus' discussion event.

Ann directs an expanded role within the group executive team that seeks to align the priorities of Barts four hospital business units with the development of an integrated health and care system across north east London (NEL).   

The Barts Health NHS Trust group of hospitals - comprising the Royal London, St Bartholomew's, Mile End, Whipps Cross and Newham hospitals - provide a huge range of clinical services to people in east London and beyond. Over 2.5 million people look to the Trust's services to provide them with the healthcare they need.

Before Ann took up this role, she was director of strategy for Barts neighbours at Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust (BHRUT). She played a key role in fostering closer collaboration between the two trusts and setting the conditions for a wider acute provider collaborative partnership (APC) with Homerton Healthcare.

Ann has spent most of her career in healthcare, working for a variety of NHS bodies in London and the South East, and running her own leadership consultancy. Before joining BHRUT in 2022 she was director of system improvement for NHS London.

As group director of strategy and partnerships, she is leading work to renew the clinical and organisational framework, and ensure it shapes the emerging collective clinical strategy of the APC. In particular she is supporting the hospital chief executives in developing place-based partnerships that deliver tangible improvements for local people and tackle health inequalities in our communities.

Ann is also working on how best to foster closer collaboration with the other acute trusts in north east London.  

In this wider role she is providing Board-level leadership for Barts' major strategic projects like the redevelopment of Whipps Cross hospital and the development of Barts Life Sciences. Ann is also leading business planning for the Trust, and she is responsible for the Trust's commercial function, while chairing the investment steering committee and liaising with the Barts Charity.

The discussion to be run by Future Cities Forum on 'Future hospitals' will ask questions about the National Hospital Programme which was announced in October 2020 to deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030.

Rt Hon Wes Streeting MP, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has stated in 2025:

'Despite the claim, there were not 40 ‘new’ schemes and some were just refurbishments or extensions. To put it simply - there were not 40 of them, they were not all new and many were not even hospitals. The spin that had been applied to the programme was widely known before the election. But even knowing that, I was shocked by what I found on entering the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). The programme was hugely delayed, by several years more than had already been revealed by the National Audit Office. Most shocking of all, the funding for the programme was due to run out in March of this year, with no provision for future years whatsoever. The money simply was not there. The programme was built on the shaky foundation of false hope and without the confirmed funding these building projects could not be delivered, let alone delivering them all in the next 5 years.

'If I was shocked by the state of this programme, patients ought to be furious. Not only because the promises made to them were never going to be kept. They also desperately need new buildings and new hospitals. The NHS is quite literally crumbling. I have visited hospitals where the roof has fallen in, pipes regularly leak and even freeze over in winter. As Lord Darzi found in his investigation, the NHS was starved of capital in the 2010s, with £37 billion under-investment over the 2010s. This lack of investment meant the UK construction sector did not have the appetite and capacity to build the number of concurrent hospitals required to deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030 when this promise was made. Delivery is dependent on providing certainty to develop relationships and secure investments in the supply chain which would ensure this vital hospital infrastructure is realised.'