Lung charity restructures and creates trading arm

Governance | Tania Mason | 5 Jan 2010

The British Lung Foundation has restructured its operations and created a new trading subsidiary that will deliver lung testing events for Primary Care Trusts across the country.

The creation of BLF Services Ltd and the appointment of Caroline Stevens as its commercial director is the final step in a restructure that has seen a whole new executive management team installed at the charity.

Last year, the Foundation reviewed its operations and replaced its team of department heads with board-level directors. Two departments were merged into one and two department heads were made redundant following a period of consultation.

The Foundations’ new board of directors comprises David Horton as director of communications, Paul Fredericks as director of support services, Charlotte Guiver as director of fundraising and marketing and Christine Lewis as director of finance and administration.

The new commercial direcgtor of BLF Services will also join the board. Caroline Stevens is a qualified pharmacist whose previous role was managing director of an independent day hospital in Birmingham.

Stevens will lead the development of a commercial strategy and head up the Foundation’s commercial enterprises, which include the production and distribution to PCTs of self-management plans and exercise diaries to help people with lung disease manage their condition, as well as lung testing events.

The new directors will work with chief executive Dame Helena Shovelton to implement the Department of Health’s forthcoming Clinical Strategy for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease this year. The new strategy is expected to increase the resources devoted to identifying and treating people with chronic lung disease, and BLF Services Ltd is the charity's effort at ensuring it is at the forefront of this work.

The charity has already run several lung testing events at locations such as shopping centres and bingo halls in various areas of the UK and hopes to continue this work as part of the new strategy. Previously it used DoH Section 64 grants to carry out the testing but in future it expects it will have to win contracts from PCTs.

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