NHS Charities: New Governance Model

In the last year, Barts and The London Charity have pioneered a new constitutional framework for their charity by replacing their Section 11 trustee body comprising individuals with a corporate trustee taking the form of a company limited by guarantee. Whilst corporate trustees are relatively commonplace among NHS charities, until now these had always been NHS bodies (PCTs, NHS Trusts, Foundation Trusts etc.). However, in this case, the corporate trustee (which is also a registered charity in its own right) is not a creature of NHS legislation but of company and charity law.

Whilst the underlying NHS legislation has always been sufficiently elastic to enable the appointments of private companies as trustees of NHS charitable bodies, the policymakers had not until this recent appointment recognised the benefits of this option.

The new structure secures a number of advantages, the most obvious comprise limited liability for the trustees (now company directors of the corporate trustee), legal personality - thereby streamlining the acquisition, disposal and administration of charity assets and simplifying contractual arrangements - and a corporate...