Andrew took up post as Director of Workforce at the Department of Health in May 2001. Previously he was both an NHS Trust Chair and Policy Director (HR) at the NHS Confederation.

His first priority was to prepare a workforce strategy for the NHS, ‘The HR in the NHS Plan’ which was published in June 2002. This sets out the two overriding workforce objectives of More Staff, Working Differently - expanding capacity and reforming service and jobs. It also describes the four pillars of strategy that will achieve these objectives: the model employer, the model career (skills escalator), improving morale and improving people management.

Andrew’s responsibilities relate to all employment aspects of the 1.3 million staff of the NHS in England: recruitment and retention; workforce planning; pay and reward; regulation; education, training and personal development; employment policies and practices; NHS Pensions. Since 2003 Andrew has assumed the Department of Health’s policy responsibility for workforce development of the social care workforce – around 1.2 million staff employed by local councils and in the private and voluntary sectors.

Current priorities are to implement all of the reforms and develop a set of performance measures for HR which can be summarised into an HR balanced scorecard. He is also working on a new workforce strategy designed to support the NHS Improvement Plan.

Andrew is married with three children and lives in the North West.