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NHS England welcomes three new Non-Executive Directors

The chair of NHS England Professor Sir Malcolm Grant today welcomed the appointment of three new non-executive directors.

Professor Sir John Burn, Noel Gordon and David Roberts have been appointed by the Secretary of State as non-executive directors of NHS England, with effect from 1 July 2014, for a period of four years. They join the existing group of six non-executive directors.

Sir Malcolm said: “I am delighted that it has been possible to make three such high-calibre appointments. Our new non-executive directors bring additional strengths to the Board, enhancing our scientific and clinical capacity and also our commitment to innovation in transforming NHS services through commissioning to the benefit of patients.”

Professor Sir John Burn is a senior clinical geneticist and academic, based in Newcastle. He holds the NHS Endowed Chair in Clinical Genetics at Newcastle University, and conceived and helped to bring to fruition the Millennium Landmark Centre for Life in Newcastle. He is a distinguished academic, clinician, and clinical entrepreneur, as founder of two spin out companies in the field of genetic diagnostics.

Noel Gordon’s background is in consultancy, most recently with Accenture, where he was global managing director of the Banking Industry practice. He has extensive practical experience of driving fundamental innovations in transforming industries, and of big data, analytics and digital technologies.

David Roberts has recently been appointed as the next chairman of Nationwide Building Society, after four years as deputy chairman of Lloyds Banking Group plc. He has had extensive banking experience over a long career, principally with Barclays, in leadership, governance, financial management, operations, technology and culture change, and of leading large-scale change in heavily regulated environments, including digitisation across the banking industry.