Council of Governors

Our Council of Governors acts as a link between University Hospitals Sussex members and the Trust Board. It promotes active membership, represents local views and stands as a ‘critical friend’ to the trust. It also appoints – and decides the remuneration of – the Trust’s Chair and the Non- Executive Directors, and approves the appointment of the Chief Executive.

Our governors are typically involved in many areas beyond their statutory duties, such as:

• Holding constituency meetings to communicate with members
• Representing the views of members to the Trust Board
• Developing and reviewing the membership strategy to ensure representation and engagement levels are maintained and increased as appropriate
• Working with hospital volunteers
• Giving talks to interested stakeholders

Council of Governors meetings in public 2026

Questions

In respect of questions for the Council of Governors meeting, taking place on Thursday 28 May please email your questions to our Company Secretary, Glen Palethorpe: [email protected] by 1.00pm on Tuesday 26 May 2026.

• If the question you are raising relates to a specific patient then whilst we would be in a position to acknowledge this within the meeting, the Council are unable to answer direct questions that would contain information which is personally identifiable and as such would be inappropriate to share in an open forum.
• The Trust does have a number of mechanisms whereby we may be able to help you, these range for the Patient Access and Liaison Service, the Complaints Team or our Subject Access Team.  We would seek to encourage questions on the Trust in relation to strategy and policy.

The details of which are available within our website:

• PALS
• How to make a complaint
• Subject Access Requests

Should you have pursued these routes already then please contact the Company Secretarial Team.

Meeting papers

• Council of Governors papers – 19 February 2026

Are you interested in becoming a governor?

Please contact our Company Secretary to find out more or ask any questions, or book a place on one of our briefing sessions.