Architect of health changes moves on

WANTED: Executive with outstanding abilities to take charge of well-established pounds 100m-a-day healthcare business with a one million-strong workforce. Sensitive post in a constantly evolving organisation. Salary negotiable, c pounds 80,000. Applications to Virginia Bottomley, Department of Health.

Sir Duncan Nichol, who has steered the National Health Service through arguably its most turbulent upheaval over the past four years, is to step down as its chief executive next April. He will leave one of the hottest seats in Whitehall to take up a professorial appointment, heading the new Centre for International Healthcare Management at the University of Manchester.

Sir Duncan, 52, was a key figure in the creation of the NHS internal market two years ago, and in the establishment of the self-governing trusts that now run most health services. Although widely respected in the service, he became embroiled in a rare episode of controversy before the last general election by criticising Labour policies in a Daily Mail interview.

Virginia Bottomley, the Secretary of State for Health, said that he had made a 'remarkable contribution' to the implementation of the legislation setting up the internal market. 'The post he will be moving to next year is a proper reflection of his own high reputation, and the interest being taken across the world in the (NHS) changes we have made.'

Sir Duncan's successor is expected to have to drive yet more structural change through the NHS. The Department of Health is undertaking a top-to-bottom review of NHS functions and staffing.

Candidates for Sir Duncan's job are thought to include Kate Jenkins, who masterminded the reorganisation of Whitehall departments in the Eighties, and Alan Langlands, deputy chief executive of the NHS.

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