Technical / Taylor takes retirement after 35 years' service

Officially, Mr Taylor retired at the end of June. However, he is spending some time in the coming months finishing off consultancy work at Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Integrated Care System, where he is finance director, and for NHS England on the integrated care system development programme.

Mr Taylor has been an avid supporter and one-time chair of his local West Midlands HFMA Branch and worked with the association’s national Financial Management and Research Committee.

He was presented with an HFMA award for his outstanding contribution to the association in 2006 and a Lifetime Achievement Award by the branch in 2016.

Mr Taylor co-authored a report, Home thoughts from abroad, in 2005, comparing the
English payment by results system with models used in other countries.

But his links to the HFMA started even earlier than his own NHS career. His father, Deryck Taylor, was treasurer of the West Midlands Regional Health Authority, and was closely involved with the association in its early days, when it was called the Association of Health Service Treasurers.

‘I was desperate not to be an accountant like my dad,’ says Mr Taylor. ‘I did economics at university, but when I came to the end of my degree, it seemed the obvious career choice, despite my misgivings.’

He didn’t join the NHS immediately, though, instead taking a trainee accountant post with Nottinghamshire County Council.

After qualifying, he moved to Coventry City Council, followed by his first health service job – at Dudley District Health Authority – in 1986. Four years later, and with a spell as acting treasurer at Dudley under his belt, he joined the West Midlands Regional Health Authority as its first GP fundholding project manager.

His first substantive finance director post was at Coventry District Health Authority, which he joined in 1992, leaving after eight years to become director of finance and deputy chief executive at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.

In the early 1980s, although he was working in local government at the time, he took part in the HFMA UK/US exchange programme, travelling to St Louis and Washington with his father. 

‘My mum didn’t want to go, so my dad invited me,’ he explains. ‘I must have been in my early 20s and I think I thought the flight was free,’ he adds with a chuckle.

But once he joined NHS finance, he went on the exchange in his own right in 2007 and 2008, developing a lasting friendship with the Stivers family from near Chicago.

Surprisingly, he was able to indulge one of his passions on that trip to the States – his support for Aston Villa. ‘We went into the Nike shop and the new Villa away shirt was hanging up for sale. It hadn’t even come out over here.

‘Obviously they’d put it out early by mistake. So, we were able to turn up for the first home game of the season wearing shirts that hadn’t yet been released.’

But he is quick to point out that HFMA membership is not just a ticket to football
terrace one-upmanship. ‘The HFMA is a fantastic network for maintaining personal and professional contact with people,’ he says.

Since 2003, Mr Taylor has worked as a consultant, which brought him to a range of
jobs, including finance director of the NHS Commissioning Board Authority, the precursor of NHS England.

This was one of a number of career highlights for him, and he was closely involved in
negotiating the contract for the integrated single financial environment (ISFE), the ledger system for commissioners that is now delivered by NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS).

‘We managed to convince the board that we needed a single accounting system for all the clinical commissioning groups,’ he says. ‘It would have been impossible to consolidate each year if we had done what the trusts had done – having their own accounting system for each organisation.

‘A common ledger made much more sense – I recognise there are hundreds of CCG finance staff who might disagree with me here!’

A deal was made with NHS SBS quickly, under a framework agreement that was just
about to expire in 2012.

Mr Taylor recalls navigating the Department of Health and Cabinet Office approval processes with just two days to spare, and getting final approval via a text.

So, having been both a consultant and a substantive finance director, which role has he found more fulfilling? Office politics and some of the less valuable aspects of the finance director job can be less of a burden for a consultant, he says, but the flipside is that you can feel less like you’re part of the team.

However, he adds: ‘When working as a consultant, you do the best job you can, partly for professional reasons, but also because you are approaching the role in the same way, irrespective of whether you are a consultant or employed. You also get the opportunity to work with many more people in very many different organisations and health systems.’

Aged 64, retirement now beckons, and Mr Taylor and his wife will spend more time at their new flat in Weymouth and take opportunities to travel abroad.

He has recently discovered walking football, having wrecked his knees in his youth playing a slightly quicker version of the game, and he plans to rekindle his love of drawing and painting, as well as fulfilling his longstanding dream of learning to play the piano.