Our November Board meeting will be open to the public
02 November 2021
In April we announced we were opening two of our Board meetings to the public on a trial basis. We were pleased to welcome 10 residents to our May Board meeting and our second open meeting will take place on 30 November.
Open Board meetings give anybody, whether or not they live in a Network property, the opportunity to ask questions or express views relating to matters on the meeting agenda, as well as observe how our Board makes decisions.
This is one of the ways we are delivering on our strategic objective of Strengthening residents’ trust in us.
We’ll review any feedback from both the May and November trial meetings and make a decision about whether to formally adopt open Board meetings for 2022 and beyond.
Registering and asking questions
Our 30 November meeting will take place between 5pm to 7pm. It will be held online over Microsoft Teams.
If you want to attend, you need to register your interest by completing this form by 5pm on 16 November. Once you do we’ll send you an email with joining instructions and a link to join the Teams meeting.
You can also submit a question before the meeting. All questions must relate to items on the agenda which you can read here.
Any questions relating to your tenancy or home, or general business not on the agenda will not be answered in the meeting. If questions are submitted that are not relevant to the agenda, we will provide a written response.
Inappropriate or offensive questions or comments will not be recognised or accepted.
Board Meeting Structure
There will be two parts to the meeting:
- Part one - Non-confidential, which is open to people to observe. Questions submitted by members of the public ahead of the meeting will be answered during this part, where they are relevant to the agenda item. A member of our executive team will read out and answer the question when the meeting gets to the relevant agenda item.
- Part two – Confidential, which only Board members and Executive Directors can attend. Confidential or commercially sensitive matters will be discussed during this session and all observers will be required to leave at this point.
Board Meeting Conduct
As with our Board members, it’s important observers respect the business of a Board meeting and the processes that must be followed.
Although the non-confidential part of the meeting is open for the public to observe, only questions submitted before the meeting will be answered. Observers will not be able ask questions during the rest of the proceedings as the meeting is a formal governance meeting that must proceed in accordance with the established regulatory and operational protocol.
All observers are required to follow our Code of Conduct. This includes:
- We may refuse an application to attend if there’s evidence an observer’s purpose is to disrupt or interfere with the proper decision making and processes of Network Homes.
- Observers should not raise issues relating to their specific tenancy at the meeting.
- Behaviour by any observers which breaks out Code of Conduct will result in you being asked to leave the meeting. Any observers asked to leave a meeting will not be permitted to attend another session.
- Observers should treat everyone with respect including Network Homes’ staff, Board members, residents and observers with consideration and respect their contributions to meetings.
- Observers must agree to leave the meeting at the end of the non-confidential ‘open’ part of the meeting when required.
