The Trust Board is committed to openness and transparency, and members of our local communities are welcome to observe meetings of the Board of Directors that are held in public.

Please read the important information here on how to observe our Board meetings in public, noting in particular the advance registration requirement for seating, due to space restrictions.

We welcome questions about anything relating to the powers and duties of the Trust, and a 30 minute slot for public questions will be included on the agenda for Board meetings held in public, in line with the process set out below.

The Board of Directors usually hold their meetings in public, bi-monthly, on the second Thursday of the month. For 2025/26 this means in May, July, September, November, January and March.

The agenda and papers are published on the website 6 days ahead of the meeting and members of the public are invited to submit questions to the Board in line with the process set out below. Questions must show the name and address of the person submitting the question and, if submitted on behalf of an organisation, the organisation’s address must also be stated.

Submitting Your Question:

• Questions can be submitted in writing or via email to sath.trustboardsecretary@nhs.net, to be received by midday on the Tuesday before the meeting on Thursday of that week, to guarantee the question being dealt with at the Board meeting.
• Questions can be submitted on any matter within the powers and duties of the Trust.
• If time allows after responding to written questions, the Chair may at his or her discretion permit verbal questions on the day.
• Normally, no more than one question may be asked by any person for each meeting, to allow the Board to respond to a fair cross-section of questions. At the Chair’s discretion and if time allows, additional questions may be allowed from the same person.

At the Meeting:

• Public questions will be taken at the start of the meeting after the patient/staff story. Written questions will be taken first, followed by verbal questions, if these have been permitted by the Chair.
• There will be a maximum of 30 minutes on the agenda for the public questions.
• Questions and the answers to them will be included in the minutes of the meeting.
• Questions will be dealt with in the order in which they were received. We will seek to give an overview of the response to the question, but a more detailed response to questions will be provided as part of the minutes which will be made available on the Trust’s website, and directly in writing to the person(s) who asked them following the meeting.
• Any questions received in writing after the Tuesday midday deadline will be responded to by writing to the person directly and will be read out at the subsequent meeting in public, along with the answer.
• Should the 30 minutes given for public questions not be sufficient to allow all submitted questions to be dealt with, then the Chair will read out the question but will indicate that a response will be provided in writing to the person who submitted the question. The question and the response to it will be recorded in the minutes of the meeting.
• If it is felt that a question is better dealt with as a Freedom of Information request, ie requests for large amounts of data or information, the question will be read out at the meeting and it will be confirmed that the request is being dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act with a response to be sent to the requestor within the statutory deadline.
• The Chair reserves the right to refuse to accept any question that is not within the powers and duties of the Trust; is defamatory, frivolous, offensive or vexatious; is deemed to be overtly political; is substantially the same as a question that has already been answered in the previous 6 months; or would require the wrongful disclosure of confidential or exempt information (as per the exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act 2000) – this includes matters relating to specific patients or members of staff.
• You may attend in person to listen to the feedback; the Chair will read out questions whether you are in attendance or not. It is not possible to join the meeting virtually.
• The Public Board Meeting is a meeting held in public and not a public meeting. As such, the public are not permitted to participate in the meeting, may not ask a supplementary question, and there will be no opportunity for discussion on public questions.