Our Board
David Fillingham
David joined the NHS in 1989 from a career in manufacturing. He went on to take a number of Chief Executive posts. From 2001 to 2004 David was Director of the NHS Modernisation Agency developing new ways of working and promoting leadership development across the NHS as a whole. He was awarded the CBE for this work. In 2010 David was made the National NHS Quality Champion in the NHS Leadership Awards.
David was the Chief Executive of AQuA (the Advancing Quality Alliance) from its creation in April 2010 until he retired from the NHS in June 2019.
He has also held a number of non-executive roles including Deputy Chair at Aintree Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Chair of the Trafford Local Care Alliance and Chair of the Healthier Wigan Partnership. He has also been a visiting Senior Fellow at the Kings Fund.
David has particular interests in quality improvement, leadership development, co-production with the users of services and partnership working.
Chris Oliver
Chris joined the Trust in July 2020 as Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Chief Executive before becoming Interim Chief Executive in October 2022 and Chief Executive in April 2023.
Chris has sustained a track record of driving performance and delivering results with a focus on improving quality outcome and staff empowerment.
Chris has had a varied and immensely satisfying career which has enabled him to successfully lead healthcare staff in a variety of challenging environments. Chris' experience covers finance, operational and leadership roles.
He was previously Chief Operating Officer at Mid Cheshire Hospitals, a post he held for three years before joining LSCft.
Executive Directors
Dr David Fearnley
David has been a consultant forensic psychiatrist since 2001, and was appointed as the Medical Director for Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust in 2005. He then moved to Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, as the Executive Medical Director, in August 2019. His interests include encouraging doctors to become involved in medical leadership, quality improvement science, large scale transformational change, and digital health technology. David was named as the Royal College of Psychiatrists Inaugural ‘Psychiatrist of the Year’ (2009), received the Healthcare Financial Management Association/Academy of Medical Royal Colleges ‘Working with Finance - Clinician of the Year Award’ in 2013, and was named in the Health Service Journal’s 100 Clinical Leaders List in 2015.
Julie Anne Murray
Julie Anne is an experienced Registered Nurse and has held a number of operational, clinical and professional lead roles. Julie Anne was Deputy Director of Nursing, Allied Health Professionals and Quality at North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare from 2016 to 2019. During her time there, Julie Anne supported the executive team and the trust in achieving a Care Quality Commission rating of outstanding, Julie Anne then joined LSCft in December 2019 as Deputy Chief Nurse and Quality Officer. Since then Julie Anne has led on a number of key improvements including the Health Service Journal Award winning Reducing Restrictive Practice Programme, the implementation of DIALOG+ and the development of a nursing career pathway from entry level through to consultant level, providing local ‘grow your own’ opportunities, complemented by recruitment of internationally educated nurses.
Emma McGuigan
Emma started in the NHS in 2009 as part of the NHS graduate management programme. Emma has held a range of operational roles across a number of NHS organisations. Emma joined the organisation in 2021, she was previously the Director of Operations in Mid Cheshire Community and Hospital Trust. Emma is passionate about continuous improvement, service development and compassionate leadership.
Ursula Martin
Ursula joined the Trust in October 2019, having had almost 20 years working in the NHS in governance and improvement roles. Ursula has had senior Director roles across acute and mental health trusts, having also worked for a period of time in commissioning. Ursula is passionate about ensuring that there are robust governance frameworks to ensure ward/team to Board visibility, and that there is a just and learning culture, allowing staff to improve and innovate so that they can provide the best care that they can to our patients. Ursula is also a big advocate of co-producing improvement and development work with patients, staff and our partners.
Rob Cragg
Rob joined the NHS in 2001 and has enjoyed a career spanning operational management, leadership and organisational development. Rob throughout his career has helped trusts to focus on improvements to culture and inclusion, creating working environments that improve both staff and user experience alike. Robs career has seen him work at local, regional and national level, as well as being fortunate to gain experience in both the private and academic sectors. Creating equity, enhancing well-being and improving staff recognition are Rob's personal drivers, consequently choosing to select to work across Mental Health and Community services for most of the last decade. He was most recently Deputy Director of Organisation Development, Education and Inclusion at Southern Health NHSft, a post he held for three years before joining LSCft.
Dominic McKenna
Dominic has been with the Trust since its inception, originally as Financial Management Director and more latterly as Director of Operational Finance with additional responsibility for Contracts and Procurement. Dominic assumed Interim Chief Finance Officer status from 1 November 2022.
Previous experience for the Trust has been gained from being part of the team which established the Trust and was also heavily involved in the Trust assuming Foundation status and the Transforming Community Services project. Prior to Lancashire Care, Dominic was employed by Guild Community Healthcare having entered the NHS as a Regional Trainee. He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance Accountants (CPFA).
Non Executive Directors
Steve Wilson
An Accountant, Steve is the Treasurer of Greater Manchester Combined Authority, a position he has held since the end of 2019, managing the authority’s annual revenue budgets of £1.7bn and capital programme of £0.5bn. For the two years leading up to the creation of the Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board earlier this year, Steve also covered the Greater Manchester Integrated Care System Finance Director role.
No longer having that responsibility, he is keen to maintain the connections he built with the NHS over most of his professional career. Steve was Executive Lead, Finance and Investment of the Greater Manchester Health & Social Care Partnership between 2016 and 2019, responsible for an annual budget of £6.1bn, a role he took up after spending three years as Director of Financial Control for NHS England. All of his earlier NHS career was spent in the North-West, including roles as Director of Finance and Development/ Deputy CEO of Wirral Community (2011 – 2014) and Deputy Director of Finance (2009 – 2011), right back to when he joined the NHS in 1996 as a National Financial Management Trainee.
Steve has been Trustee of St Ann’s Hospice since 2018 and lives in Manchester.
Paul Farrimond
Paul has over forty years' experience in the NHS as a qualified general and mental health nurse and as a professionally qualified manager with an MBA. He has worked in acute, mental health, primary care, community provider, integrated health and social care, primary care trusts, commissioning and improvement partnerships. Since taking early retirement he has undertaken interim director roles for trusts and improvement partnerships, as well as individual project work. Paul has been a trustee for a mental health charity and previously was a non-executive director for a London mental health Trust where he chaired the Quality and Safety Committee and the Mental Health Law Committee.
Phil Huggon
Phil is a Non-executive Director with several organisations mostly in health and education across the private, charitable and public sectors. Originally from Preston, he graduated with a degree in Languages from Oriel College, Oxford, then spent 20 years in commercial, marketing and transformation roles with BP, MARS and Shell, both in the UK and across Europe. Over the last 13 years, he has held several NED roles with the NHS, and currently is Chair of the NHS Transformation Unit, Vice Chair of Healthwatch England and NED with Liverpool Women’s Hospital (until March 2021). He has a particular focus on strategy and transformation.
Ruth Lowry
Ruth was appointed to the board as a non-executive director in April 2021 and has chaired the Audit Committee since October 2021. She is a chartered accountant and spent the first half of her career with PricewaterhouseCoopers and its predecessor firms in London, the East Midlands and the North West. She specialised in public service audit and advisory work, working with a range of organisations including NHS providers, further and higher education institutions, housing associations and charities. From 2004 to 2022 she was Lancashire County Council’s head of internal audit, and worked closely with both the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy and the Institute of Internal Auditors. She has been a member of the governing body of the University of Central Lancashire since 2018, and has chaired its audit committee since 2019.
Anika Ephraim
Anika is an experienced Non-Executive Director within the charity and education sectors. She has an engineering background, graduating from UCLan with a degree in Design & Manufacturing Engineering, the majority of her career has been spent working for international corporations in the energy and manufacturing sectors in the UK and overseas.
Lucinda McArthur
Lucinda has over 20 years of experience in public health and senior NHS roles, including 13 years spent operating within Lancashire and South Cumbria. Now running her own company, she stood down from her role as Senior Advisor to NHS West Lancashire CCG in 2021, after five years in post.
After just over a year as an associate of Public Health England’s Well North programme, Lucinda took up the role of CEO of its spin-off, Well North Enterprises, a position she held for nearly a year and a half, before leaving to spend more time with her young family.
Her previous roles include Consultant in/Associate Director of Public Health, NHS Central Lancashire PCT (2008 – 2013), Public Health Network Director, Cheshire and Merseyside Public Health Network (2007 – 2008) and Public Health Specialist and Teenage Pregnancy Strategy Co-ordinator, Lambeth PCT (2004 – 2007). Lucinda lives near Northwich, Cheshire.
Stephen Watkins
Stephen began his career in central government with the National Audit Office before joining the NHS in 1988 to work in the finance function with South Manchester Health Authority. He is a qualified accountant and has spent most of his career working as a senior advisor to the health and care sector. For over 30 years, Stephen has worked in the healthcare consultancy industry including roles with Price Waterhouse and Hoskyns/Cap Gemini.