Transparency statement
English Cymraeg
December 2019
Overview
We will be as open as possible about the work of our Board and keep confidential discussions and papers to a minimum. We set out below an overview of the points.
If you would like more information, please see our detailed Transparency Statement below.
What we can and cannot publish
We will publish the following on our Board:
- Meeting agendas, papers and minutes. We will publish these as soon as possible after each meeting, usually within two weeks.
- Key performance reports. There are also annual reports to the Board on key areas of our work and regular updates on our business plan.
- News about the work of our Board, including videos, blogs and webcasts.
- An Accountability Statement, explaining where our legal powers come from, who we are we accountable to, our formal oversight and reporting. It includes a decision-making framework that shows the type of thing the Board thinks about when it makes decisions.
Sometimes It may not be appropriate to publish certain Board papers, or parts of them, because of legal issues or they may be sensitive for other reasons. We will keep this to a minimum and will only do this when it is absolutely necessary.
We want to be as open as possible about the work of our Board and keep confidential discussions and papers to a minimum.
We will publish a meeting agenda, papers and full draft minutes as soon as possible after the meeting, aiming for that to be within two weeks of the meeting.
Our Board papers include key information on important matters for the Board to consider in making its decisions such as Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, the views of our stakeholders and how the issues relate to our Corporate Strategy.
We also publish our key performance reporting, taking a balanced scorecard approach with associated narrative and exception reporting. This is in addition to annual reporting to the Board on key areas of our work, financial reporting and regular updates to Board on our business plan.
We publish our papers on our Board webpages (link to follow). This area of our website provides accessible content on the work of the Board, including video, blog and podcast content.
Our Board webpages include a decision-making framework. The framework sets out what the Board considers as it makes its decision.
We also publish a clear Accountability Statement. The Statement sets out where our powers come from, to whom we are accountable, including the public and profession and our formal oversight reporting, and how we meet those requirements. The Statement links to a wide range of our corporate documentation so that everyone can find it all in one place.
What we can and cannot publish
It may not be appropriate to publish some Board papers because they:
- relate to emerging strategy or policy
- are commercially sensitive
- contain personal data or matters involving a named individual, an individual who can be identified or who has a reasonable expectation that the matter will remain confidential
- include discussion of risk that might be exacerbated by publication
- include legal or other professional advice on sensitive or confidential matters.
If an entirely confidential item appears on an agenda it may simply be listed as 'confidential item' with no further information provided.
Confidential information may occasionally be redacted from the minute or a published paper, although we will aim to keep such redaction to a minimum. In some instances, a Board paper may have confidential information in an annex – for example commercially sensitive detail - and the annex will not be published.
In addition to our formal Board meetings, the Board may meet in seminar and workshop sessions, or host a reception or dinner for stakeholders. These sessions are not minuted but the discussion may be read into the minute of the formal Board meeting through the Chair's report and reflected in associated communication, such as a Chair’s blog on the day of the meeting.