Temporary changes to North West London Pathology’s governance structure

The owners of North West London Pathology—The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust—are to strengthen their support for ambitious plans to deliver one of the largest pathology transformation programmes in the country, through a temporary change to the organisation’s governance structure.

This interim change will not have any impact on North West London Pathology staff or their employment rights. Operationally, there will be no impact on the provision of pathology services to the Trust and staff should continue to use pathology services as they did before.

The decision follows a recommendation in a review commissioned by the owners, which concluded that North West London Pathology has credible plans in place and the right expertise within the executive management team to deliver them, but identified a gap in the support being offered to the management team by the board. 

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust will provide additional support, as the host trust, to North West London Pathology on behalf of the owners. The existing North West London Pathology board will be dissolved and an owners’ committee will be established.

North West London Pathology came into being on 1 April 2017 to start consolidating the pathology services from three trusts, operating on six sites. This followed national recommendations and mandates from the Carter Report. The vision remains the creation of state of the art laboratories with efficiency, capacity and scalability at its core.