Baroness Dido Harding, the Conservative peer who led NHS Test and Trace, will step down from her role as chair of NHS Improvement in October.
Harding, who was replaced as head of the coronavirus test and trace programme by former deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries in April, began chairing the NHS body in October 2017.
She faced intense criticism at NHS Test and Trace, with the National Audit Office questioning her accountability. The Public Accounts Committee later concluded the £37bn programme had failed to make a “measurable difference” during the pandemic and criticised its level of spending and reliance on consultants.
Harding stepped back from NHS Improvement – a non-departmental body that oversees NHS trusts and foundation trusts – while working on the test and trace operation, before returning in June.
On her first day back in the job this summer, she said working in the NHS over that period had been “the privilege of my life”.
She also said at the time she was considering applying to be chief executive of NHS England, after Sir Simon Stevens announced his plans to leave the role.
“Many people around the country are thinking of what they’ve learned and experienced over the course of the last 18 months and I’m no different,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
“I’m thinking about what I want to do with my life and looking forward to rejoining my NHS colleagues and picking up where I left off over a year ago,” she said.
She did apply for the chief exec job but lost out to NHS England's chief operating officer, Amanda Pritchard.
Harding’s position as head of test and trace has been the subject of some controversy, and was one of several unregulated public appointments that have led to calls for increased scrutiny and transparency about the way positions are filled.
First civil service commissioner Ian Watmore told MPs in March that Harding’s appointment may expose “cracks” in the regulatory system.
“We have got a patchwork quilt of regulatory bodies like us and it must be theoretically possible for there to be a crack between them,” he told the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee.
“The post that Dido Harding fills has not been categorised as a civil service post by the civil service. I assumed it was an NHS post, to be honest, which is outside the civil service.
Before joining NHS Improvement, Harding spent seven years as chief exec of the telecoms firm TalkTalk, and previously held senior roles at Sainsbury's and Tesco.