Public Board papers 31.03.22

Agenda item 12/22a

Meeting of the Board of Directors Thursday 31 st March 2022 Directors’ representations

1. Representation by all members of the board Under the terms of authorisation as a Foundation Trust it is necessary for the board to confirm their awareness of all significant matters within the organisation and disclose any matters of consequence to the organisation. This is done for the previous 12 months. A draft of the letter is attached as appendix 1. All board members are asked to sign this letter to confirm the statements contained within it. 2. Register of Commercial Interests and Affiliations The register is required to comply with standing orders 8-10 (included in our constitution as Annex 8) which cover declarations and register of interests, pecuniary interests and standards of business conduct and is also part of The Christie response to the published national guidelines on “Standards of business conduct for NHS staff”. All board members are required to review their entry on the register and complete the standard declaration (appendix 2). A summary of this information is published on The Christie website. 3. Fit and proper persons declaration The fit and proper person’s requirement (FPPR) is a statutory requirement for all care providers registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to ensure the suitability of all their directors and those acting in an equivalent capacity. The requirement was brought into force for NHS bodies on 27 th November 2014 by the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, Regulation 5. The Regulations introduce the following criteria for assessing fitness. A Director must: • be of good character • have the necessary qualifications, competence, skills and experience • be capable, by reason of their health, of undertaking the relevant position (after any reasonable adjustments under the Equity Act 2010) • not have been responsible for, been privy to, contributed to or facilitated any serious misconduct or mismanagement (whether unlawful or not) in the course of carrying on a regulated activity or providing a service elsewhere which, if provided in England would not be regulated activity • not be unfit, as per the ‘unfit’ criteria Responsibility for ensuring the fitness of directors rests with the individual provider organisation. The Trust needs to ensure the fitness of all its new directors on recruitment, but the requirement will also be on-going in that we will need to constantly assure ourselves of the continuing fitness of our directors. The Trust will also need to ensure appropriate action is taken to react to information it might receive about a director which might call into question his/her fitness. A one-off retrospective check was carried out in respect of the directors in post at the time of the introduction of the requirement. The Chair is required to sign off director appointments as meeting the requirement. All board members are required to complete the fit and proper persons declaration (appendix 3).

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