Trust Board Meetings
Information about attending our Board meetings’.
Introduction
Board meetings of Gloucestershire Health & Care NHS Foundation Trust are open to the public and Trust colleagues. Our meetings take place every other month at Trust HQ in Brockworth, and all future dates can be found on our website.
If you would like to attend a Board meeting, please contact the Trust Secretariat Team. They can ensure that you receive the necessary information about car parking, venue details, access to papers etc. We do hold our Public Board meetings online as well, so if you can’t attend in person, you are very welcome to join via MS Teams.
Agenda and papers
The agenda and papers for our Board meetings are published six days in advance of the meeting on our Trust website. An electronic copy of the papers can also be emailed directly to you by contacting the Trust Secretariat Team.
Some items of Board business are confidential, for example, if they concern private, personal information. These items are dealt with in a private session of the Board. This is a separate meeting held following the Public meetings.
Member’s interests
All members of the Trust Board are required to declare if they have an interest, for example, financial, which is relevant to the work of the trust. These are recorded in a register which is regularly inspected at the Audit and Assurance Committee and made available on our website. Members are also required to state at the start of the Board meeting if they have an interest in the items to be discussed. Special rules set out in our Standing Orders govern whether a Board member who has declared an interest can take part in the discussion.
Public questions
A slot for comments or questions by members of the public is set aside at the start of each Board meeting. This is an opportunity to ask questions or make comments on matters about Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust. Further guidance on submitting or asking a question at the Trust Board can be found below.
Minutes
A record of the issues discussed, and decisions taken at the meeting, will be set out in the minutes which the Board will be asked to approve as a correct record at its next meeting.
Written questions for the Board Meeting
People may ask a question on any matter which is within the powers and duties of the Trust. A question should be asked in writing and sent to the Trust Secretary by 10am, five clear working days before the date of the Board meeting.
A written answer will be provided to a written question and will also be read out at the meeting by the Chair or other Trust Board member to whom it was addressed.
If the person who sent the question in is unable to attend the meeting in person, the question and response will still be read out and a formal written response will be sent following the meeting.
A record of all questions asked, and the Trust’s response, will be included in the minutes from the Board meeting for public record.
Verbal Questions without Notice
A member of the public who has sent a written question may, with the consent of the Chair, ask an additional question on the same subject.
Public Board meetings also have time allocated at the start of each agenda for verbal questions from members of the public present, without notice having been given.
An answer to a question under this procedural standing order will take the form of either:
- a direct verbal answer or,
- if the information required is not easily available, a written answer will be sent to the person who asked the question and this will be circulated to all members of the Trust Board.
Exclusions
Written questions may be rejected and verbal questions will not be answered when the Chair considers that they:
- are not on any matter that is within the powers and duties of the Trust.
- are defamatory, frivolous or offensive.
- are substantially the same as a question that has been put to a meeting of the Trust Board in the past six months or,
- would require the disclosure of confidential or exempt information.
- are anonymous.
Contact us
Public questions can be submitted for Trust Board meetings by emailing Trust.Secretary@ghc.nhs.uk.
Click here to see our Council of Governors