Board Meetings in Public

The next meeting of the Board of Directors will be held in public virtually on Thursday 11 January at 9.30am. Members of the public are welcome to observe the meeting virtually.

If you wish to join the meeting virtually, please contact the Trust’s Corporate Governance team at bfwh.corporate.governance@nhs.net or call 01253 951505.

As part of the Trust’s commitment to openness and accountability, Board meetings will be held in public on a regular basis and will provide the opportunity for staff, patients, the media and the public to attend. The meetings will usually begin at 9.30am and any variation to this time will be shown on the agendas for the meetings which will be available on this section of the Trust’s website.

Members of the public and media are welcome to observe the meetings but are advised that they are meetings held in public, not public meetings. If you wish to attend, please contact the Corporate Governance Team via bfwh.corporate.governance@nhs.net or on 01253 951505.

In relation to posting agendas, all matters to be acted on by the Board will be posted on the Trust’s website at least three working days prior to the Board meeting and will be made available online 24-hours a day at https://www.bfwh.nhs.uk/about-our-trust/board-meetings-in-public/. In urgent cases, or when a subject matter needs immediate action or comes to the attention of the Board subsequent to the posting of the agenda, upon making certain findings the Board may act on an item that was not on the posted agenda under ‘Any other Business’. Any supplementary agenda items will also be posted on the Trust’s website.

There are occasions when the Board will need to consider agenda items which are confidential and cannot be discussed in public. The Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings Act) 1960 and the Public Bodies (Admissions to Meetings) (NHS Trusts) Order 1997 permits a Board of an NHS Foundation Trust to pass a Board resolution at the meeting to exclude the public and media from the meeting “whenever publicity would be prejudicial to the public interest by reason of the confidential nature of the business, or for other special reasons stated in the resolution”. Whenever a Board resolution to conduct business in private is passed, the resolution itself should be made public.

The schedule of Board Meetings in Public for 2022/23 is outlined below: