Welcome
Are you interested in local health services?
Have your voice heard and help us shape our future.
The information contained within these web pages sets out our plans to strengthen links with our community and our staff by becoming an NHS Foundation Trust. This is a relatively new type of NHS organisation that is owned by and accountable to its community. For us to be a successful NHS Foundation Trust, we need everyone in our community who is interested in the Trust to become a member of the Trust and to help shape our future.
We are proud of both the high quality clinical care we provide and the levels of involvement and interest that our community takes in our services and in our future. However, we want to increase this involvement and the best way to do so is by becoming an NHS Foundation Trust.
In becoming an NHS Foundation Trust we will remain very much part of the NHS family. We will uphold the founding values and principles of the health service - providing high quality clinical services free to all entitled to its care, based on need and not on ability to pay. Our vision will remain to be "Trusted by the Community" and our values will be to put our patients first, to work as a team, to value everybody, to be honest and open and to value diversity.
So what are the key differences between an NHS Trust (as we are now) and becoming an NHS Foundation Trust? Put simply, they are that we would be:
- answerable to and governed by our community through a system of local accountability to members and elected governors, with the latter being elected by the membership;
- authorised and regulated by an independent regulator known as Monitor;
- able to have greater financial freedoms to support the delivery and development of our services;
- able to have greater freedom, working with our community, to decide how we develop our services.
Becoming an NHS Foundation Trust will offer new opportunities and benefits to those of you who decide to become a member of the Trust - which we very much hope you will do. You will be able to elect governors to be your representatives on the Council of Governors and you will be able to receive discounted goods and services via the NHS Discount Scheme.
Public consultation, governance arrangements (closed 30 May 2008)
While our public consultation on how we propose to manage ourselves when approved to become an NHS Foundation Trust closed on 30 May 2008, we’ve decided to keep the consultation material available for people to look at and review should they wish to do. To see this information, as well as the consultation report, as soon as it is published, click here.
Become a member of Foundation Trust
Our consultation about becoming a Foundation Trust has now closed but we still want people to join us as members. The more people who join, the greater say the local community will have in how hospital services are run. To become a member, click here.
