New Board-in-Common for community and mental health trusts | News

The three community and mental health NHS trusts in north west London have established a new Board-in-Common to improve services for the communities they serve.

The new arrangement follows the appointment of Tom Kibasi as Joint Chair for Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL), Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust (CLCH), and West London NHS Trust (WLT).  

Tom Kibasi, Joint Chair, said:

We have big ambitions to improve mental health and community services. Across our three good trusts, we have many examples of brilliant care—and we want to bring the very best that we offer to all our patients and communities, all of the time. By coming together, we will be able to apply three times the effort to solving our common challenges once, rather than a third of the effort three times over. The new Board-in-Common will enable us to deepen our collaboration and maximise our effectiveness.

The Board-in-Common will work in close partnership with North West London Integrated Care Board to set the strategy for community and mental health services and to establish a common framework for quality of care, access to services, as well as finance and productivity.

Four new Strategic Committees will be created to support the Board-in-Common, defining priorities for joint working and overseeing their implementation and impact. These committees are Quality of Care, People, Finance & Performance, and Service Transformation. They mirror the Trust-level committees in the three organisations. Each Strategic Committee will be chaired by a non-executive director of one of the Trusts with a lead Chief Executive assigned to each.

The Board-in-Common will meet four times a year and its meetings will take place in public. The first meeting will take place on 17 July 2024 and will be held in person at Herringham Hall in Inner Circle, Regent's Park, London, NWL 4NS, from 9:30am to 1pm. View the agenda and meeting pack. The Board-in-Common’s membership comprises all Board members of each of the three organisations.

The three Trusts will retain their statutory responsibilities and each Trust will continue to hold its own Board meetings quarterly as well as their regular cycle of Trust committee meetings. A Vice Chair is now in post for each of the three organisations, with Dr Mohini Parmar at WLT, Dick Sorabji at CLCH and Amanda Rowlatt at CNWL.