These are the Board Meeting minutes from 24 February 2015

We are happy to publish the minutes of our Board meetings so that Board activities and decisions are accountable. There is always a delay between the meeting held and the publication of the minutes.  This is because the minutes must be approved before they can be published.  Minutes are approved at the meeting after the meeting they are a record off.  For example, if a Board meeting is held in March and the next meeting is held in April, the minutes of the March meeting will not be on the website until after the April meeting.

1.         Apologies

Apologies were received from Katherine Finn.

2.         Minutes of the meeting held on 22nd January 2015

It was agreed that where changes are required to the minutes that these should be approved by the Board before being published on the website.  The revised minutes of the January meeting will be considered again at the meeting in March. 

3.         Report on Applications

Some concerns were raised about the quality of the reports received and a number of other observations and questions were raised.  These included:

• The high rate of expenditure in January compared to other months.  This was thought to be due to improvements in the speed of processing of payments due to adaptations to the CRM system which now incorporates decision and payment information
• A discrepancy between the number of application forms sent and the number of people who have received payments.  This is explained by the fact that we processed applications initially without an application form
• The need for improvements in the reports to ensure that they reflect the actual situation at any point in time.  It was explained that this was now the case for current information but that there were times (before the system was fully operational) when the information has not been inputted into the system but was in the process of being done.

4.         A.O.B.  

The issue of each member of the Board having to go through the CEO, rather than directly to an Advisor, in relation to individual applicants was raised.  This has caused additional work for someone acting as a nominated person or advocate, as well as the CEO.  Following discussion it was agreed that:

• where a Board member works in an organisation that advocates on behalf of applicants, that person should go directly to the Advisor
• where a Board member is making representations on behalf of an applicant, outside of this role, then that person should inform the CEO in the first instance.

5.         Presentation of findings from review by Mazars

Representatives from Mazars joined the meeting at this point and the remainder of the meeting was devoted to their findings from the review. 

6.         Next meeting

The next meeting of the Board will be held on Thursday, 26th March 2015at 10.30 a.m. venue to be confirmed.