Effective Reporting to the Governing Body

As part of the SFHA's Get Governance series of members’ resources, guidance looking at Effective Reporting to the Governing Body is now available.  The drafting has been supported by a members’ working group whose comments have been extremely valuable.  It is intended to support and be useful to:

• staff who are responsible for supporting RSLs’ governance 
• principal advisers/lead officers to the Governing Body (GB), sub-committees and working groups
• Chairs
• Governing Body Members (GBMs) 

SFHA’s thanks go to its members, who have been generous with their contributions about their own reporting styles and practices. 

As with each of the components of the Get Governance series, this guidance on reporting is advisory, not prescriptive and it aims to offer good practice advice based on sector experience.  It is important to acknowledge that reporting arrangements are specific to individual organisations, which should develop their governance structures and reporting styles to meet their specific needs.  The guidance is intended to support organisations to review their established arrangements, perhaps as part of a periodic governance ‘health check’, or as a consequence of feedback from Board member annual reviews, or to take forward recommendations from internal audits.  It has been informed by sector experience of what works – and what does not - and includes some tips to help identify opportunities for improvement as well as tackling common challenges.

The guidance is available in the downloads section to the left of this article.  Please contact Alan Stokes, Policy Lead if you have any queries regarding the document.