The NHS continues to face significant challenges, while striving to deliver high-quality services for every patient and citizen. These realities require resilience, innovation, and collaboration at every level.
We are fortunate to have a critical role in enabling the NHS to meet these challenges. Our work is not only about procurement and logistics, but also about creating the conditions to support the delivery of better patient care and system efficiency.
Our 2026–2027 Business Plan marks a defining delivery year for NHS Supply Chain, as we begin a major transformation of our organisation, while maintaining day‑to‑day operational stability and delivering the services that NHS trusts and patients rely on. The plan is aligned with the Government’s NHS Fit for the Future: 10‑Year Health Plan, particularly its three shifts: hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention.
Our strategy and corporate priorities
Our vision is to enable smarter, simpler, more connected care.
We will achieve this through continuation of our strategy to buy smart, supply right, partner expertly and delivery of four transformation programmes:
- Supply Chain Modernisation
- Trading Transformation
- Commercial Transformation
- Cultural and Capability Development.
All activity supports the commitment to deliver £1 billion in efficiency savings to the NHS by 2030.
Our 2026 / 2027 corporate priorities are:
Strengthen patient impact and system value
We will put clinically-led, evidence based value at the centre of everything we do. To improve outcomes, experience and impact for patients and the wider NHS.
Transform how we buy and trade
We will transform our commercial and trading model to ensure interactions with are simple, transparent, and deliver value to the NHS.
Modernise our organisation|
We will build a modern, integrated organisation with the systems, data and processes required to support a resilient and future ready supply chain.
Build a values-based high-performance organisation
We will create a culture where people and talent thrive by strengthening our leadership, our behaviours and our shared accountability for delivering results.
Ensure operational stability
We will safeguard reliability and trust by ensuring the stability and governance needed to support both day-to-day operations and long-term transformation.
See our Downloads ▼ section to read our full business plan for this year.
Strengthen patient impact and system value
Patients are at the heart of everything we do. Through clinical leadership, championing quality and enabling innovation, we will drive system-wide improvements that enhance the patient experience across the entie pathway.
Through this commitment we will:
- Embed clinical leadership and quality improvement across four major programmes, ensuring priorities shape NHS transformation.
- Expand MedTech innovation adoption with stronger governance and system collaboration.
- Strengthen stakeholder engagement at local, regional, national level.
- Continue rollout of our Inventory Management System (IMS) and point of care solution, extending it to 14 more trusts in 2026-2027.
- Expand our value outside of hospital settings, including community wound care.
- Build resilience to ensure the NHS is well supported across winter by improving forecasting accuracy, expanding the winter products watchlist, and ensuring continuity of supply.
- Deliver efficiency savings and cost improvement, supporting our goal to deliver £1 billion of savings to the NHS by 2030.
- Support NHS Net Zero goals, aiming for 75% of frameworks with measurable sustainability benefits.
Transform how we buy and trade
We want trading with us to be simple and transparent. By transforming how we buy and trade, we will unlock commercial excellence, reduce complexity and deliver greater value for the NHS.
During 2026 / 2027 we will:
- Deliver the Commercial Transformation Programme (CTP):
- Embed NHS Buying Principles into all frameworks.
- Standardise and simplify commercial processes.
- Begin phase two of our Trading Transformation Programme:
- Reduce reliance on legacy platforms.
- Accelerate transition to a single Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.
- Simplify our pricing:
- Reduce multi‑buy-multi‑sell arrangements.
- Align sell prices across customer segments.
- Continue development of our digital platform:
- Expand the digital commerce platform to all NHS trusts
- Develop a fully integrated customer digital strategy and roadmap, aligned with our modernisation programmes.
- Embed and Scale the NHS Core List to reduce variation and simplify procurement.
Modernise our organisation
During 2026-2027, we will begin a major transformation to replace our ageing systems and expand our physical logistics capacity and capability. The NHS Supply Chain Modernisation Programme will be organisation wide. It will impact every part of the business and will fundamentally overhaul our legacy systems, reimagining how we operate (leveraging technologies such as AI) to deliver a more resilient end to end NHS Supply Chain service to NHS trusts.
To achieve this we will:
- Launch the first phase of the NHS Supply Chain Modernisation Programme:
- Onboard our delivery and assurance partner to support us in the delivery of this programme.
- Reset our modernisation plan in collaboration with our service provider partners GXO Logistics and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
- Begin transition to a modern, integrated ERP platform.
- Improve demand and supply planning, moving away from manual spreadsheets.
- Implement data platforms and analytics strategies:
- Create a single source of truth for our organisation.
- Improve governance, reporting and data quality.
- Begin early exploration of AI use cases.
Build a values-based high-performance organisation
Year two of our people strategy is centred around continuing to transform our culture and our capability to enable the transformation of our core operations. 2026-2027 will be pivotal in supporting the step change in how we operate; setting up the brilliant basics to build trust, create community and a culture where people and performance thrive.
To deliver this, we will:
- Embed values and universal behaviours across the colleague journey.
- Continue leadership development through the Personal Leadership Programme.
- Build a robust talent strategy, succession planning and workforce capability.
- Simplify and optimise people processes, with automation where appropriate.
- Introduce a clearer performance framework linking individual, team and organisational outcomes.
Ensure operational stability
Operational stability is critical to enabling the transformation outlined in this Business Plan. Our approach focuses on modernising core platforms, strengthening cyber security, and embedding integrated governance and assurance. Through this approach, we will protect continuity, reduce operational risk, and create a resilient foundation for long-term success.
To ensure this, we will:
- Define future requirements for electronic demand capture (eDC), currently live in 162 trusts.
- Strengthen cyber security across three critical areas: data protection, identity access management and disaster recovery.
- Enhance business continuity planning and organisational preparedness to ensure that we maintain essential services and that NHS partners are supported during periods of disruption.
- Introduce a new Supplier Assurance Framework to improve resilience, transparency and sustainability within the supply chain.
- Implement stronger enterprise oversight of our transformation, to ensure design integrity for our transformation and modernisation programmes.
- Deploy project and portfolio management tools through a a modern, cloud-based project and portfolio management (PPM) platform, ensuring greater clarity and confidence in delivery performance to our system partners.
