CLCH has decided that it will change its plans to become a foundation trust. 

Increasingly, as the NHS focuses more on integration and less on competition between NHS organisations, the freedoms and flexibilities associated with being a foundation trust are less relevant to NHS Trusts now than in the past. Additionally, because CLCH is well led, rated as 'good' by the Care Quality Commission, and financially stable, we already operate within maximum autonomy in relation to the NHS Trust regulator, NHS Improvement.

Since January 2016 there has been a national pause in the foundation trust authorisation programme and as far as we understand there are no plans to reopen the pipeline. Given that there has been no change to the national position in the past three years and because our staff and local people have expressed some confusion about whether we are seeking foundation trust status, we believe it is important to make the position clear – that we will not progress our application to become a foundation trust. As a result of this decision, we will no longer have a legal basis for holding your data and our membership database will therefore be deleted and unfortunately you will no longer receive the @CLCH newsletter.

On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank members for their commitment to being involved with the Trust, particularly those of you who have helped us in shaping and developing our services for your valuable contribution. While there has been no active recruitment of members in the last few years, we have maintained an accurate database and have continued to engage our members in a number of different initiatives and we hope that we will be able to persuade you to remain involved.

I would like to emphasise that we remain committed to engaging and involving the people in our communities and that we would really appreciate your continued support.

We would be grateful if you could make a positive commitment to remaining engaged and being informed of future patient experience events and engagement activities by contacting the patient advice and liaison team on freephone 0800 368 0412 or by email on clchpals@nhs.net

Yours sincerely, 

Angela Greatley OBE 
Trust Chair