Melanie Gavin

Melanie has supported the Trust to understand the drivers of its legal spend and more importantly consider the options available to us to reduce these costs, whilst simultaneously delivering a better quality service to the organisation. This has been achieved by drawing on Melanie’s expertise individually and also her significant knowledge of best practice arrangements advocated by NHSE. Her approach is personable, highly supportive and committed to delivery of outcome measures. We would recommend Melanie to other NHS organisations reviewing their legal services without hesitation.

Mel very quickly blended into the fabric of our organisation and quickly understood the challenges we face. Mel asks the right questions and yielded quick engagement from key players to get the results we needed. Mel’s report has been integral in driving change within our organisation. Mel is the perfect balance of supportive and pragmatic, she is focused on the ask and has gone over and above to help us achieve our objectives.

Melanie has consistently provided assistance and advice on a range of issues in a very efficient and professional manner with a keen awareness of constraints we work under especially time (and budgets). In this respect Melanie has always delivered a first class service on this basis I have recommended my colleagues in commissioning/ SBS to call Melanie as and when any issues requires legal input

"Ward Hadaway have provided us with a clear and objective view about our processes and practices in relation to legal services across the organisation. They engaged with staff in a way that recognised and respected areas of good practice from both the Trust and provider perspective and gave immediate feedback to teams to enable them to implement rapid improvement where that was helpful. We are now much better informed and able to consider a range of options for the short and medium term that will improve efficiency and effectiveness as well as having some food for thought around innovation for the ong term. It has been a really good piece of added value work.

I contracted Ward Hadaway to undertake an efficiency review of our legal services spend and of our internal legal systems and process. Melanie Gavin undertook this review and embedded herself in the organisation over a number of days in order to get a clear view and understanding of the issues we had. The report was clearly presented and it enabled us to save resources both in a reduction in legal spend but also an increased efficiency of internal systems and processes. I would highly recommend Melanie to other organisations looking to review legal services.

Melanie Gavin from Ward Hadaway approached the Trust and put forward a proposal to review our legal spend with the various legal providers with a view to provide savings. She identified that savings could be made and also provided more flexible pricing options which we have continued to use and continue to be happy with how the service is delivered. We also received the added value that Melanie said would be provided. The pricing structure enables greater flexibility with regard to pricing and also offers greater transparency in as much that we know what we are paying at any particular time.

Immensely helpful. Thank you very much for the support, your shared experiences and help compiling feedback.

You certainly made us reflect and consider the various elements that could possibly be raised and as a result we were able to think these through and prepare much more thoroughly our answers. It really helped doing this together so there was consistency and also a chance to think things through together. It also helped us to stop and think the whole thing through and the key messages to weave into our responses.

I would like to thank you so much for the help that you gave me in preparing for my interview with CQC. It was great to be able to work with someone who had a deep knowledge of the whole process coupled with a can-do approach. It was like an injection of confidence.