A focus on digitalisation, community care and health prevention could be revolutionary. But people’s fears have not yet been allayed

It’s a national treasure, beloved of the population, still brilliant in so many parts but also run down and crumbling at the edges, huge, expensive and heavily criticised. Who fancies running NHS England? After the panning the outgoing chief executive, Amanda Pritchard, got from MPs earlier this year (which may have precipitated her shock departure), her successor will need guts, determination and a very thick skin.

Crucially, they will have to support the NHS revolution that the health secretary, Wes Streeting, has declared. They will have to be a breaker of windows, not a polisher of glass. Streeting – and the public – want change to a service that has now recorded the lowest level of public confidence since surveys began in 1983. Just under a quarter of adults in last year’s British social attitudes survey said they are satisfied with what they get, even though their love for the NHS is undimmed. Above all, we complain we can’t get to see our GP, accessible on the day often only through a Glastonbury-style telephone queue at 8am, and that waiting times for hospital treatments are shocking. We fear the ambulance that arrives too late, or being left in a corridor because of staff shortages if we get to hospital at all.

Sarah Boseley is the former health editor of the Guardian