NHS blasted after posting job advert for £115k-a-year role of 'director' to create 'brave spaces'

Health service bosses came under fire last night for posting a job advert for a £115,000- a-year 'director of lived experience' who is capable of creating 'brave spaces'. 

The post – branded by critics as a 'kick in the teeth' to taxpayers – comes as the NHS faces record backlogs, a nurses' strike and the pressures of winter on services already under strain. 

An advert for the role with the Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust boasts how it is the first job of its kind in the health service.

Last night Joe Ventre, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said trusts could ill-afford to squander cash on 'non-jobs' at a time when the NHS was under huge financial strain. 

He added: 'Well-paid non-jobs like this are a kick in the teeth for hard-pressed taxpayers. At a time when nurses are striking over pay and patients wait on backlogs, there can be no excuse for trusts squandering cash.'

The NHS has previously referred to a 'lived experience' as having knowledge of racism or discrimination or being a 'white ally' and also recognising white privilege.

Adverts for the role – posted on the NHS's recruitment website and LinkedIn website – say the successful candidate will be 'interpersonally talented' and a 'strategic bridge-builder'.

It says candidates must have a 'personal experience of life-altering health condition(s)' and 'experienced significant power imbalances' in health services.

Tackling power imbalances within the trust will be one of the main roles for the successful candidate.

'The director will broker psychologically safe environments that allow people to co-produce and become equal partners in their care,' the job advert reads. Another part of the advert says the director will also need to make 'brave spaces' for patients and families to be able to give feedback on the organisation.

More than seven million people in England are on the NHS waiting list for elective care, with many living in significant pain as they wait for ops like knee and hip replacements. 

Queues are set to get even worse in response to NHS strikes, which began yesterday with up to 100,000 nurses taking to picket lines. 

A successful candidate for the director of lived experience can expect a salary between £110,000 and £115,000 per year – around four times as much as a newly-qualified NHS nurse on £27,000.

But the trust has defended advertising for the position. Chief executive Neil Carr said: 'National guidance recommends appointing a patient director who is responsible for raising the profile of the service user voice in planning, implementing and monitoring shared decision making. We are proud to be continuing our tradition of co-production.' 

There are 20 similar roles at seven NHS trusts being paid a total of at least £600,000, The Telegraph said last night. 

Sir John Hayes, chairman of the Common Sense Group of 60 Tory MPs, said: 'All experience is lived, apart from the experience of death. This sounds like yet another example of the NHS inventing problems and then creating jobs to solve them.