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NHSE names new regional director

Published on: 6 Jan 2023

A new interim NHS England regional director has been appointed for London.

Helen Petterson, who has been the capital’s covid recovery director since March 2020, is taking over the top job in London while a permanent replacement is found for Andrew Ridley, who left last month.

Before taking the covid role, Ms Petterson had led the North Central London Clinical Commissioning Group from April 2017. She was chief executive of Islington Primary Care Trust at the start of the previous decade, and has worked across health and social care in London for the past 30 years.

Mr Ridley, himself an interim on secondment from Central London Community Healthcare Trust, had been in place since the former regional director Sir David Sloman was appointed NHS England’s national chief operating officer.

Ms Petterson joins as NHS bodies in the capital brace for another round of strikes this month affecting the London Ambulance Service Trust and many of the biggest teaching hospitals in the country, amid intense winter pressures.