Guidance

NHS foundation trusts: in-year reporting

In-year reporting is designed to measure and assess your foundation trust's performance against its annual plan.

From:
Monitor
Published
23 March 2015
Last updated
5 April 2016 — See all updates

Applies to England

Overview

This guidance explains how NHS foundation trusts can meet their financial sustainability and governance requirements set out in the Risk assessment framework.

The information you need to supply Monitor is likely to be the sort that you use as a licence holders for your own management.

In-year reports

You’ll be monitored more or less depending on your risk rating, but for most foundation trusts, in-year reporting includes:

  • a quarterly submission to Monitor
  • other exception reports and ad hoc reports
  • more frequent reporting may be required where specific areas or risk are identified, eg monthly financial reporting

Quarterly reports

You must submit quarterly reports to Monitor.

These cover your foundation trust’s:

  • financial performance, including income and expenditure, statement of financial position and cash flow performance
  • performance against national access and outcomes standards (waiting times and rates of C.difficile, for example)

Monitor then reviews your performance against your annual plan, and also looks at your board’s assessment of your compliance with your licence.

If there is a significant deterioration in your performance or a significant difference between your in-year submissions and your annual plan, you’ll have to explain why and what you are doing to address this.

Each quarter, Monitor publishes an overview of the whole foundation trust sector’s performance, using the information you provide.

Submit exception reports

If you have information about something that could affect your trust’s ability to comply with its licence, you must send it to Monitor, even if it’s not something that is routinely requested.

Examples of this are listed in diagram 6 of the Risk assessment framework.

They include:

  • investigations being opened by other authorities
  • patient safety incidents or never events
  • complaints or concerns from patient groups
  • any significant reputational issues, for example, any adverse national press attention
  • any patient suicide, homicide or absconsion (mental health trusts only)
  • significant financial changes
  • any change in your senior staff (chair, senior independent director or executive director)

Submit ad hoc reports

You’ll need to give Monitor any additional information it asks for to assess your compliance with your licence. You can find out more in the Risk assessment framework.

Submission process

You should:

Update directors’ details

You must inform Monitor of any change in your board of directors.

You should send these details to NHSI.compliance@nhs.net:

  • name of your foundation trust
  • your email address in case of queries
  • director’s full name (including title)
  • type of change (new director, remove director, change existing director’s details, etc)
  • director’s job title
  • tenure (permanent, acting, interim)
  • date of change
  • director’s email address
  • director’s telephone number
  • if the director’s immediate previous employer was an NHS organisation, please provide the name of the organisation

Update governors’ details

If you’ve not yet published your first annual report as a foundation trust, you should submit details of any changes to your council of governors to Monitor.

Please send this information to NHSI.compliance@nhs.net:

  • name of your foundation trust
  • your email address in case of queries
  • type of change (elected, resigned, amend existing governor’s details, etc)
  • date of change
  • governor’s full name (including title)
  • constituency type (public, staff, patient/service user, nominated/stakeholder)
  • name of constituency

You shouldn’t send these details if you have already published your first annual report as a foundation trust.

Nominate a lead governor

You should send details of your lead governor to NHSI.compliance@nhs.net

Please include the:

  • name of lead governor
  • name of foundation trust
  • email address of lead governor
  • lead governor telephone number (mobile if possible)

How to submit annual reports and accounts

Information on submitting annual reports and accounts is available here.

Annual plans

Information on how to prepare and submit your foundation trust’s annual plans is available here.

Updates to this page

Published 23 March 2015
Last updated 5 April 2016 + show all updates

  1. Added the compliance team's new NHS Improvement email address.

  2. First published.

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