Our public consultation on our plans to become a foundation
trust ran from 9 February to 15 May 2009.
We spoke with over 1800 members of the public
during the consultation period, encouraged all of our staff to give
us feedback and shared our plans with over 2000 partner
organisations.
We received 350 formal responses to the
proposals set out in our consultation document, and the feedback
was broadly positive.
This section looks at:
Our response to the main points raised
The main points raised during the consultation
related to the following:
Membership for people who work but don’t live in
London
During our consultation we asked whether
people who work in London, but live outside the capital, should be
eligible for membership.
Sixty-three per cent of the public and our
staff agreed that they should.
We have decided to have a membership of people
from outside greater London, as a means of involving those people
who work in the capital and may need to use our services.
This public constituency will cover the three
strategic health authorities that border London – East of England,
South East coast and South Central – and has a population of 13.5
million.
The health authorities cover the following
counties: Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire,
East Sussex, Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Isle of Wight, Kent,
Norfolk, Oxfordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, West Sussex.
We will call this constituency
’Outside London’.
Members of this constituency will
be represented by one governor on our Council of Governors.
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Make-up of public constituencies
Many of our key stakeholders questioned our
proposed make-up of the public constituencies within London. They
felt the groupings didn’t make sense, whether it was due to size,
geography or alliance of boroughs within proposed constituency
groupings.
We have decided that, in London, we will have
six public constituencies (instead of the proposed 11) which will
be closely aligned with the six health sectors under which our
commissioners – the primary care trusts that buy local health
services – operate. We feel this will enhance our partnership
arrangements and it fits well with the health model for London.
In addition, we will have a public
constituency covering the strategic health authority areas
bordering London which will enable people who work in the capital
but don’t live there to have a say in our service.
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Number of public governors
As a result of the changes to the public
constituencies, we have increased the number of public governors
from 11 to 13 (two per public constituency in London and one for
our Outside London constituency).
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Staff groups
Fifty-eight per cent of staff who responded
during the consultation indicated they would prefer two groups
within our staff constituency – one for support staff and one for
frontline staff.
We have decided to have one staff group for
our support staff (for example staff who work in our finance, HR,
fleet, resource centre and technology departments), and one for our
frontline staff (staff who are directly involved in treating
patients or who take 999 calls). Since our frontline staff make up
the majority of our staff (82 per cent), this group will have two
seats on the Council of Governors, and our support staff will be
represented by one governor.
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Make-up of the Council of Governors
A range of feedback was received on the
proposed make-up of our Council of Governors.
We recognise the benefits of having a
representative Council of Governors, and considered the responses
with this in mind. We are also aware from other foundation trusts
that a Council of Governors is more effective if the size of the
Council is kept at a manageable level.
Our new arrangements for our public
constituencies have led us to change the number and allocation of
public governors. We have decided to keep to our original proposals
for staff governors and our partner organisations. However, we are
continuing discussions with the trade unions about their role in
future foundation trust arrangements. This includes their request
for guaranteed seats on the Council of Governors.
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Our full response to the consultation findings
Full details of the consultation findings can
be found in our evaluation document.
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Our consultation documents
Our proposals were set out in our consultation
documents:
If you would like a paper copy of either document - or for one
of them to be provided in another language or in a format
such as easy read, Braille or audio - please contact Freephone
0800 7311 388
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What next
We will use the feedback from the consultation
to finalise our plans and governance arrangements which will form
part of our application to become a foundation trust. Our
application will be submitted to the Department of Health in early
2010.
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