Trustee

Introduction

Our charity’s governing team comprises three roles.

In Queen Alexandra Charity, Birmingham (QAC) itself

Trustees are trustees of the charity.  They are charity trustees and directors because we are a charitable company.  This is the role that requires the greatest time commitment.  As a minimum, our trustees attend Board of Trustees meetings and sit on one or more committees of the Board of Trustees.

Committee co-optees are co-opted to one of the committees of the Board of Trustees.  This is the role with the least time commitment, because it does not have the range of duties that trustees do; committee co-optees do not sit on the Board of Trustees or have any the other duties that fall to trustees.

In our trading subsidiary

Directors of QAC Enterprises Limited (QACE) have oversight of our trading subsidiary company.  The time commitment is about the same as that for committee co-optees.

The main differences between these roles relate to the time commitment and the fact that trustees have wider duties than committee co-optees and QACE directors.

What the trustee role offers you

In this senior voluntary (unpaid) position, you will have the chance to influence outcomes for our students and clients, benefitting from a range of support as part of an approachable, but rigorous and professional, team. As well as your remote reading and attending meetings, you will have the chance to be involved ‘on the ground’, whether that’s formally when you visit and report as a lead trustee, or informally to attend events and other engagement opportunities.  You can learn new skills, sharpen up existing ones and, if you don’t already have links to the world of disability, this is your chance to create them in a volunteering role for a charity spanning, education, supported living and community services with ambitions to expand.

The purposes of the role

• The purposes of a QAC trustee (acting as part of the Board of Trustees) are to
• determine, preserve and develop the educational character of our college
• set, and communicate, our strategy and strategic goals
• hold executive leaders to account for the charity’s performance and for the quality of what we provide, including by monitoring the implementation of strategies and improvement plans and assessing performance against these and other metrics
• hold executive leaders to account for the performance of staff and hold senior post holders to account, and to
• exercise effective control to ensure that our funds and other assets are protected, that our charity remains solvent and that its legal obligations are met.

What you will be doing

Your main duties

You will share the collective responsibility within the Board of Trustees to carry out the main duties of the role. These will be to

• act in the charity’s best interests
• promote the safeguarding and welfare of the charity’s learners and clients
• ensure that the charity defines, and carries out, its company objects, vision, values and strategic direction
• foster an environment that enables the charity to fulfil its mission for the benefit of learners, clients and the wider community
• ensure that the charity complies with the requirements of its governing documents and with an appropriate range of internal policies and procedures
• ensure that the charity’s resources are managed responsibly, effectively and efficiently, including by
• approving annual estimates of income and expenditure and approving a financial plan of at least three years’ duration
• being responsible for appointing, grading, suspending, dismissing, appraising and determining the compensation of senior post holders and, if not a senior post holder, the charity secretary
• setting a framework for the pay and conditions of all other staff
• promote equality, diversity and inclusion
• act with reasonable care and skill, developing or improving existing ones
• ensure that the charity makes itself accountable for the stewardship of its resources, that includes significant taxpayer funds, and to
• serve on at least one of the committees of the Board of Trustees.

How you will carry out your main duties

These will be to ead reports from executive leaders; provide challenge and support; contribute your knowledge and expertise; add to the variety of viewpoints and diversity during meetings to reach collective decisions; help to inform strategy; provide direction; and you will assess performance. You will complete training relating to safeguarding, attend governance strategy days, fulfil a formal lead trustee role and participate in appraisal of your performance

Responsibilities of individual trustees

As an individual, you will have the responsibilities listed below.

• To act in the best interests of the charity.
• To take an active interest in the Board of Trustees’ responsibilities and to help the board to fulfil them.
• To make available such amount of your time as is needed to be effective in the role.
• To read, and to ensure that you understand, written material prepared for meetings.
• To attend all meetings of the Board of Trustees set out in the annual schedule and to make all reasonable efforts to attend those Board of Trustees meetings that are called outside the annual schedule.
• To participate actively and constructively during meetings and strategy days.
• To: declare any relevant financial, business and personal interests; to sign, and to abide by, the charity’s Code of Conduct for Trustees; be in alignment with British Values as defined by the Government, and to comply with the Seven Principles of Public Life, relating to selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.
• To apply external perspective and experience to the role.
• To be aware of, and to comply with, those of the charity’s policies that are relevant to the work of the committee including, but not limited to, those relating to: equality, diversity and inclusion; safeguarding (including the Prevent Duty, the Seven Principles of Public Life and the British Values); health and safety; the protection of the charity’s data and IT systems; and rules relating to committee co-optees as visitors on the charity’s premises.
• To respect the confidentiality of matters and data relating to the charity, its students, its clients and its staff.
• To undertake mandatory training within required timescales, including refresher and update training, where what is mandator is determined by the Board of Trustees and subject to change
• To engage with the governance appraisal process in a willing, honest and professional manner that promotes improvement in performance.
• To take an interest in the local, regional and national environment of the charity and the regulatory framework in which it operates.
• To promote equality, diversity and inclusion.
• To promote the charity within the community that it serves.

Time commitment

Experience tells us that prospective trustees can underestimate the amount of time needed for the role and we want to be up-front and honest with you by offering our best estimate of the time commitment needed from you. The table below provides this, assuming that you sit on one committee, which is the minimum.  See our current Governance Meetings Schedule.

While the schedule of meetings is spread out, there are parts of the year that bring peaks of activity. This includes reading papers before meetings and, sometimes, unexpected and urgent business.  And, of course, inspection can create its own, short notice, demands.  We don’t want to discourage, but it’s fair to be realistic.

Eligibility

• Charity law and the Companies Act define criteria that must be met for a person to be eligible to be a trustee and/or company director. On appointment, trustees are required to declare that they are eligible.  The criteria may be obtained by contacting QAC’s governance team.
• A QAC trustee may not be employed by it unless this is provided for in our Articles of Association. At present, the Principal and Chief Executive Officer and two trustees nominated from among QAC’s staff may be trustees.
• Committee co-optees are required to declare any updates to the Register of Interests and to the Register of Gifts and Hospitality, and to declare any personal interest in any agenda item, at the start of each governance meeting. They are also required to make an annual declaration that the registers are up to date.  These records are held by the Governance Team and may be made available to the public.
• The charity requires applicants for trusteeship to apply for a Disclosure and Barring service (DBS) criminal record check and to bring the resulting certificate, in person, to our Human Resources Team. The Board of Trustees has the final say on whether any criminal record should prevent a person from becoming a trustee and, in reaching a decision, it will seek the advice of the Chief Executive Officer, whether they are a trustee or not. We also require proof of identity that meets the criteria that we specify.

Indemnity

• The charity has indemnity insurance to cover trustees acting in good faith. In most circumstances, if there is a problem at a charity resulting in loss to a third party, the aggrieved person may sue the charity as a corporate entity. In some circumstances, it may be possible for a claimant to sue an individual trustees.  However, the law provides some protection in this situation.

Person Specification trustee

Core skills

The core skills that a QAC trustee needs are

• the ability, and the willingness, to promote improvement in the quality of the charity’s provision, including by recognising what works well and offering challenge
• the ability to read, scrutinise and challenge substantial amounts of written material, within the period allowed for this before a meeting
• the ability to scrutinise written material, verbal information and arguments and to put that scrutiny to use for the benefit of the charity in a constructive way, using appropriate communication and influencing methods
• the ability to contribute to the approval of appropriate strategies, improvement plans, targets and key performance indicators
• the ability to make reasoned arguments and to help colleagues reach reasoned and reasonable decisions with honesty and diligence, and in good faith
• the ability to work constructively with other trustees, committee co-optees and the charity’s staff, students and clients, and
• the ability to identify and to maintain or to acquire, the skills needed to fulfil the role.

Generic skills

The generic skills that a QAC trustee needs are

• strategic awareness
• financial awareness
• the ability to contribute to the formation, and realisation of, a vision
• the ability to subscribe to established values
• the ability to ask probing questions
• the ability to listen critically and to appraise
• the ability to analyse and to solve problems, and
• the ability to work within a framework of collective decision-making in the best interests of the charity.