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Trust Chair and Non-Executive Report - July 2025

Meeting: Trust Board – Public Meeting

Date: 9 July 2025

Report Title: Trust Chair and Non-Executive Report

Agenda Item: PUB25/07/1.5

Author: Mrunal Sisodia, Trust Chair

Lead Director: Mrunal Sisodia, Trust Chair

Purpose: Information/Noting

Assurance: Substantial

Link to CQC domain:

  • Caring
  • Responsive
  • Effective
  • Well-led
  • Safe

Link to EEAST’s Strategic Mission:

  • Patient Mission
  • Partnership Mission
  • People Mission
  • Productivity Mission

Equality Impact Assessment: No negative impact identified

Purpose: To update the Public Board on Chair and Non-Executive Director activities since the last Public Board meeting.

Executive Summary:

The report identifies:

  • Key areas of Board focus since the last report
  • Key areas of Board focus in the coming months
  • Non-Executive Director additional activities providing wider assurance and Board visibility
  • Key activities by the Chair since the last Public Board

Introduction / Background

In my last report to Board, I predicted that 2025-26 was going to be a difficult year for the Trust with significant pressures and risks bearing down on EEAST. Over the last two months, the Board has been tackling some of these matters.

Emergency Operations Centres

For some time, we have been aware that our current EOC set up is not sustainable. Whilst our Norwich EOC meets our current and future requirements, both the Bedford and Chelmsford EOC sites pose significant issues with regard to capacity, building configuration and staff experience. Given these constraints, there is little that we can do with these sites to bring them up to the required standards and prepare for the growth in EOC capacity we require to cope with the increasing number of calls.

Since September 2024, the Board has been considering the right course of action. We have decided that EEAST should move to running two EOCs, not three – consistent with the majority of ambulance Trusts in the UK. This will save us money (which will be re-invested in increased front-line services) and provide better resilience.

A further analysis has indicated that Chelmsford is the correct location for the second EOC – this is based upon minimising the number of staff that will be impacted and data that shows the property market and workforce availability in Chelmsford is better suited to our needs. Therefore, we will be seeking to invest in a new state of the art EOC in Chelmsford to meet the needs of the population of the East of England.

Therefore, the Board has asked the Executive team to proceed to working up a full business case which will be presented to the Board in the Autumn, anticipating that changes will take a further year to implement. We have engaged extensively with staff and local health and council representatives and are committed to keeping everyone informed. We are also committed to supporting the staff impacted at Bedford to be relocated, if they would like to, or to seek redeployment both internally and within other areas of the NHS.

Corporate Costs

All NHS providers have been required by NHS England (NHSE) to make significant cuts to their corporate costs. EEAST is no different and we have been impacted more significantly than many others because the time period of measuring the growth in corporate costs coincides with the extra investments we have made in staff support services and digital and data capability. We are still working through the final details with NHSE, but it is clear that we will be required to cut some support services and make some redundancies. Again, we are committed to engaging with staff and stakeholders and trying to minimise the impact on all those concerned.

Performance and Productivity

Despite these headwinds, I am pleased to report that the Trust has made great progress towards delivering what are very ambitious and stretching performance and productivity targets. These will be explored further in the Integrated Performance Report (IPR). There are though, three numbers that I would draw your attention to that highlight areas of focus for the Board and the Trust: • Our C2 response times for May and June (at the time of writing) were 8 minutes and 12 minutes quicker than the same months last year. • Our call pick-up times averaged just over 2 and 3 seconds for May and June (at the time of writing) compared to 11 and 14 seconds last year. • Our Hear & Treat rates were over 14% for May and June compared to below 9% for both months last year.

Board Recruitment

We have seen a number of changes to the Board over the last few months – I am pleased to announce that we have successfully recruited to the roles of Chief of Clinical Operations, Finance Director, and clinical Non-Executive Director and I would like to welcome Darren Meads, Stephen Course and Susan Wilkinson to their new roles. They will be formally joining the Board over the coming months.

Thank You

We are also sadly saying goodbye to Wendy Thomas and Kevin Smith from the Board. Both Wendy and Kevin have been stalwarts at EEAST and have helped to guide the organisation through some very challenging times. They both go into their retirements with my personal thanks for all they have done for the organisation and in supporting me over the many years.

Staff and Stakeholder Engagement

The NEDs and I undertook the following activities since the last Public Board meeting over and above our core Board, Committee and working group commitments:

Activity

Internal engagement and activity

  • Monthly meetings with the BLMK sector leadership team
  • Regular meetings with Executive and Non-Executive colleagues
  • Joined a Community First Responder (CFR) shift in Luton
  • Joined a Local Operations Manager (LOM) shift at Huntingdon station
  • Met with the EOC Transformation Lead
  • Attended meetings with the Multi-faith Network and joined staff networks conference week events
  • Met with Executive Director and Non-Executive director candidates
  • Participated in Non-Executive Director interview panels
  • Joined the Stars of EEAST judging panels
  • Met with union representatives

Board / Committee (in addition to regular Board and Committee meetings)

  • Participated in the Board well-led review facilitated by NHS Providers

External Governance and events

  • Attended an NHS Confederation all member chairs meeting
  • Regular meetings with NHSE regional director, Clare Panniker
  • Attended the Southern Ambulance Services Collaborative Board meeting
  • Attended meetings with the Mayor, lead member for health and Chief Executive of Bedford Borough

Activity by other NEDS

Wendy Thomas had the following engagements:

  • Met with the Mid and South Essex (MSE) EEAST team
  • Attended the Transformation Portfolio Board

Julie Thallon had the following engagements:

  • Met with the Director of Strategy, Transformation and Integration
  • Met with the Deputy Chief of Clinical Operations
  • Met with the Sustainability lead

Catherine Glickman attended the following engagements:

  • Meeting with Community Engagement Group (CEG) members
  • Attended Herts & West Essex (HWE) Chairs’ meeting
  • HWE team update meeting
  • Meeting with the Freedom to Speak Up guardian
  • Raising Concerns Meeting
  • Meetings with CEO, Julie Thallon (NED), candidates for Executive roles

George Lynn attended the following engagements:

  • Meeting with CEO
  • Meeting with Director of Strategy and Transformation
  • Meeting with Interim Director of Clinical Operations
  • Meeting with People Director to discuss the Board Assurance Framework (BAF)
  • Attended EEAST Business Continuity exercise
  • Audit Chairs catch up SNEE
  • Initial discussion with Director of Finance candidates
  • Well-being discussion - Well-Being lead
  • Undertook Director of Finance interviews

Chris Brook had the following engagements:

  • Chaired the Charitable Funds Committee and prep meetings
  • Met with the Interim Director of Clinical Operations
  • Met with the CEO

Omid Shiraji had the following engagements:

  • Provided feedback on the Board development session on strategy
  • One-to-one meetings with Chief Executive, Director of Transformation and Head of Strategy
  • Represented the Trust at the Millennium Alliance Enterprise AI Assembly in London
  • Engaged with NHS Provider Digital Boards Programme and secured commitment for Board support
  • Engaged with specialist Mission-Based Working experts to support implementation of our new strategy.
  • Reviewed the Trust’s cyber preparedness report

Trust board

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