Meet the Trust Board
Dorset HealthCare's work is overseen by our Trust Board, which works with the Council of Governors to agree our future plans and priorities.
It is made up of a Non-Executive Chair, seven Non-Executive Directors who are not employees of the Trust and seven Executive Directors, including the Chief Executive. The members of the Board share a corporate responsibility for all decisions made.
The Board's key responsibilities are to:
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set the vision and strategic direction for the Trust
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agree our annual objectives and ensure they are achieved
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set the budget and ensure effective financial control is in place
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ensure high standards of corporate governance are maintained.
Other matters are delegated to Board committees, which operate within defined terms of reference.
The structure and responsibilities of the Board are available here
Meetings of the Trust Board
In August 2025, as part of the ongoing federation working, the Boards of Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust each agreed to move to a Board in Common arrangement for holding their Board meetings. In this arrangement each Board retains its own sovereignty and responsibilities, there will be time for organisation specific discussions, but the majority of strategic discussions, culture and engagement themes, and stakeholder and partnership issues will benefit from being discussed jointly. In practice this means that the Board meetings of each trust will take place at the same time, in the same place, with all Board members from each organisation present. Having this common forum will enable us to achieve the ambitions of our shared strategy more quickly.
Trust Board meetings are held in public, and are open to all. If you would like to dial in to the meeting please contact the corporate governance office to request the details by emailing abigail.
Members of the public are welcome to submit questions to the Board ahead of the meeting by emailing the corporate governance office at the email address above.
Agendas and papers for Trust Board meetings are available below. If you would like to read the minutes of a particular Board meeting, these can be found in the papers for the following month's meeting.”
Upcoming Board Meetings will be held on:
Tuesday, 9 December 2025
Tuesday, 10 February 2026
Board Committees
We have also have a number of Board Committees, which operate within defined terms of reference and focus on specific matters.
The NHS provider licence forms part of the oversight arrangements for the NHS. It sets out conditions that providers of NHS-funded healthcare services in England must meet to help ensure that the health sector works for the benefit of patients, now and in the future.
A new NHS Provider licence was issued on 31 March 2023. The requirements relating to certification of the licence requirements was removed from the provider licence with effect from 1 April 2023. NHS England does not routinely monitor and assess compliance against each of the individual licence conditions, although there is an expectation that providers should periodically self-assess.
A self-assessment has been undertaken and this provided assurance to the Board at its meeting on 3 June 2024 that our Trust is compliant with all licence conditions. Read the full licence, with all conditions.