Welcome
Thank you for your interest in the role of Commercial Director at St Helena Hospice.
For over 40 years, St Helena Hospice has provided expert inpatient and community palliative and end of life to the people of North East Essex facing incurable illness and bereavement, supporting them, their families, friends and carers. We support c4,500 people every year with our services.
Kate Heslegrave - Co-Chief Executive
We support members of our community, helping them make their own choices and live with dignity. By focusing on their physical, emotional and spiritual needs, we aim to bring comfort and relief to all those who need it, offering the people of North East Essex individual care and total support, regardless of their diagnosis or personal circumstances. St Helena is one of the largest hospices in the country and known for our innovative approach to both our clinical and commercial work. Our vision is to be a Leader in Caring. Our local community deserves world class care, and we aspire to be the best, and to drive innovation and excellence across everything we do.
Charities across the country are struggling to achieve a financially sustainable funding model. St Helena is a leading innovator in this, and we have spent recent years investing in growing commercial businesses whose profits will fill these funding gaps – in essence we are taking control of our own destiny, ensuring we generate the funding to continue delivering our charitable services ourselves … commercially. Through this operating model, we have reversed a structural deficit of c£1.2 million and have delivered a surplus of c£600k in FY25 and are forecast to break even in FY26 (despite the Autumn budget decisions adding an additional £1.3m to our salary bill). The forecast growth of our commercial businesses should enable us to continue to generate a surplus in future years, meaning we can invest this profit in growing our clinical services. Only 20% of our £24 million income comes from our NHS Grant. The rest we raise ourselves, a large portion of this coming from our commercial businesses. In the last financial year, these generated £12 million in income, and this will continue to grow.
We are committed to continuing to invest heavily in our commercial operations as it is the profits from this that will fund the continued growth of our clinical services. We are seeking to appoint a new Commercial Director who will lead the development and delivery of our retail, lottery and commercial cleaning businesses, as well as wider business development for the group. Each of these businesses operates independently and already has a very strong commercial team in place, led by 3 Associate Directors. The Commercial Director will take overall responsibility for these teams, in addition to the Marketing team, driving the longer-term commercial strategies and maximising profitability whilst also ensuring our teams wellbeing and development.
In addition to this we are constantly looking to further diversify our portfolio through the development of new income streams, whether through start-up businesses or potential acquisitions. The Commercial Director will also lead on this work. This is an important role and a very exciting time to join our team.
The successful candidate will have a robust commercial background, strong experience in
delivering growth, driving efficiencies, forecasting and strategic planning and will also
have experience driving the marketing function of an organisation. Thank you for your
interest in joining St Helena’s as our new Commercial Director. I
hope this role and opportunity excites you and I look forward to hearing from you.
I look forward to reviewing your application.
Kate Heslegrave
Co-Chief Executive
August 2025
