How to develop a central governance team

Get advice on setting up the best possible central governance team to provide governance services for your local governing bodies (LGBs). Use our templates to save time auditing your trust and consulting your governors and clerks.

Last reviewed on 7 March 2022
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Contents
  1. What are the benefits of doing this?
  2. Aim to be up and running for the new academic year 
  3. 1. Get approval from your board of trustees
  4. 2. Audit your trust’s existing governance processes
  5. 3. Consult with your LGBs and clerks
  6. 4. Consider how you want clerking to work
  7. 5. Set up a central storage platform
  8. 6. Communicate to your trust what services you’ll provide
  9. 7. Adapt your scheme of delegation and terms of reference
  10. Plan for growth and make changes if you need to
  11. How other trusts have done it: examples

Our thanks to our associate education experts Brendan Hollyer, Fiona Stagg, Jill Wakefield and Steve Ward for their help with this article. Also thanks to director of governance Cathy Brown, governance professional Laura Corcoran, clerk to the board Karen Frogatt and governance manager Sara Scott, who also helped with this article.

A note on terminology: in this article we use the term 'central governance team’ to mean whoever sits centrally in the trust to provide governance support to local governing bodies (LGBs) and clerks.

This article is aimed at whoever leads this central team. This individual may be called a ‘governance co-ordinator’, ‘governance manager’, ‘head of governance’ or something different.

What are the benefits of doing this?

Streamline communication and improve efficiency  Make sure there’s consistency and a standard of quality across your LGBs (for example, through a central source of training and a standardised clerking service) Give