Giving assurance to our customers: An Overview of our Governance and Performance team
Welcome to latest update in our #TeamTalk series, where we put a spotlight on the teams that make up NOE CPC.
This month we’re focusing on our Governance and Performance team, who help to ensure that both we and our suppliers meet important standards in areas such as cyber security and information governance.
Simon Pugh, Head of Governance and Performance, gives us an overview of his team’s work and why it’s vital for the whole organisation.
“I joined this team at the beginning of the year, and I see every day how important our work is, making sure we are compliant with regulations in areas such as modern slavery and sustainability.
“Our organisation carries out this work primarily because we are the Category Management Service Provider for NHS Supply Chain’s Facilities and Office Solutions category, and so we need to check that both we and our suppliers have the right accreditations to supply the health service.
“However, my team are taking it to the next level, working to ensure we reach the same standards in the rest of our category areas.
“The team strives to ensure that these standards are constantly updated and reviewed, particularly in areas such as cyber security, which is always evolving. We have to make sure we are updating how we do things and our NHS Supply Chain audits help us to check and challenge the processes that we've got and make amendments.
“We have just had our GDPR and Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) audits, which both got significant assurance, and we have a schedule of audits throughout 2026-27 that we will be working through.
“I see an audit as a celebration of how we do things correctly but also being open to change and finding best ways forward.
“Some of the accreditations are fairly standard and simply need tweaking or amending. But in other areas, such as artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, they are moving rapidly. What we would not want to do is wait 12 months and then have to have a full refresh. So we have checkpoints throughout the year just to check that the procedures that we've got in place are still fit for purpose.
“We have an evolving team here. Our new Administration Support, Lewis Jones, joined us this month, in place of Tracy Taylor, who has now retired. Lewis will be working on a project which will enable suppliers to upload accreditations and certificates to our customer relationship management software.
“We also have our supplier relationship management programme, which our Governance and Performance Specialist, Emma Dolan, leads on. Emma engages with the suppliers in our Facilities and Solutions category, making sure we get the best out of our partnership, and working out how we can best support them. We facilitate the meetings and work closely with the procurement team on these, putting together information packs that contain our accreditations too.
“We see our team functioning as a safety net, giving assurance to our customers – we have done the checks, our frameworks are set up correctly, and we can provide evidence of how we are delivering the work.
“It’s like an insurance policy – you don’t realise the value of it until you need it.”