Amanda Pritchard resigns as NHS boss

Amanda Pritchard is resigning as chief executive of NHS England, after three years in the job. Pritchard’s announcement, in the last few minutes, is not a huge surprise given there had not been a great deal of confidence among ministers and aides in the leadership of the NHS – though it is worth pointing out that this lack of confidence was not solely focused on Pritchard.

Pritchard had been very anxious to show that she was ready and willing to implement the reforms that Labour wanted to introduce, particularly the shift from acute, hospital-based care to preventive and community services. But she seemed to suffer from the same affliction as ministers of not knowing how to turn the tanker around, even if they all knew where their ideal destination was.

Pritchard was not like her predecessor Simon Stevens, who was a very political manager. She was easier to corner, as we saw in 2022, when the then chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced in his autumn statement that Pritchard had agreed that the money he was allocating to the NHS was ‘sufficient’.