Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is proud to announce that its Finance Team has been named Finance Team of the Year at the prestigious National Healthcare Finance Awards 2025.
This award recognises the team’s exceptional contribution over the past year in promoting teamwork, innovation, collaboration, transformation, and strong financial governance. The judges commended the team for managing a highly complex merger with outstanding leadership and collaboration, embracing the opportunity to identify best practice and drive innovation.
The organisation faced a major challenge in merging three finance teams, each with their own systems, processes, reporting structures and cultures. There was significant uncertainty for staff, many navigating new roles and unfamiliar systems. This was exacerbated by a six-month delay to the merger because of the 2024 general election. Despite these challenges, the finance team demonstrated high levels of resilience and professionalism and implemented a phased integration roadmap while continuing to provide financial information. The team’s achievements included delivering critical outcomes such as completing two sets of accounts, achieving a £6.3m surplus above plan and recurrently meeting their own cost improvement targets despite undergoing major transformation.
The judges said the tone from the top during a time of uncertainty was impressive. The entire finance team played an active role in the merger, embracing a co-production approach from the outset and forming smaller working groups with members from all three legacy organisations. These groups were accountable for identifying key deliverables, prioritising tasks and achieving project milestones, ensuring broad ownership and engagement.
Accepting the award at the ceremony were Kim Perry (Director of Finance) and Helen Dickinson (Senior Management Accountant – Community CAMHS).
Kim Perry, Director of Finance, said: “This award means so much to the team because it reflects not only the work, they have done throughout the merger but how they’ve done it together—with compassion, respect, kindness and not forgetting the humour. I’m incredibly proud of the team’s resilience over the last year. They’ve supported the wider organisational change and strengthened financial governance whilst going through huge change within their own roles. The award is a real celebration of all these achievements—they are an amazing team.”
Paula Anderson, Chief Finance Officer and Deputy Chief Executive for the Trust said:
I am absolutely delighted that our team has been recognised for the fantastic work they do. This award focused on how we worked together during the development of our new organisation however it also speaks to the values we hold as a team and that we never lose sight of the reason we are here; to provide essential support to our teams across the Trust who deliver high quality services every day.