Governance
Section 172 – Directors’ Duties
The Directors of the Company, as those of all UK companies, must act in accordance with a set of general duties. These duties are detailed in section 172 of the UK Companies Act 2006 which is summarised as follows:
‘A director of a company must act in the way they consider, in good faith, would be most likely to promote the success of the company for the benefit of its shareholders as a whole and, in doing so have regard (amongst other matters) to:
- the likely consequences of any decisions in the long-term;
- the interests of the company’s employees;
- the need to foster the company’s business relationships with suppliers, customers and others;
- the impact of the company’s operations on the community and environment;
- the desirability of the company maintaining a reputation for high standards of business conduct; and
- the need to act fairly as between members of the Company.’
The following paragraphs summarise how the Directors’ fulfil their duties:
Performance delivery and risk management
During 2019 the Board held a series of workshops with staff, to review and agree the strategic objectives of the company. Our objectives include aligning longer term care models with the evidence based anticipated changes in volume and complexity of care required by people in Cornwall.
During 2019 the Directors have revisited the governance, assurance and risk management approaches used within our company and improved these. This is so that Directors have full visibility and can take a prospective approach to risk identification and management. Board assurance is now provided through a refreshed approach to organisation risk ownership and reporting. We operate a number of Board Committees with Director membership and these have oversight and responsibility for risk management. The Board has agreed a risk taxonomy approach that has been introduced across our organisation. Working through our organisation, Directors have identified and assessed all risks using the taxonomy approach and controls ratings. This enables Director oversight and ownership of risk at all levels in our organisation.
Our People
Cornwall Care is committed to being a responsible employer within our community. Our Directors have reaffirmed their commitment to strategic objectives which include the wellbeing of the staff we employ. Our behaviour is aligned with the expectations of our people, our clients and the local communities that we serve in Cornwall. People are at the heart of the services we provide. For our business to succeed we need to manage our people’s performance and develop and bring through talent while ensuring we operate to the high standards required by our Directors and our Regulator. We must also ensure we share common values that inform and guide our behaviour so we achieve our strategic objectives in ways that gives the best care to our clients and the professional working experience that our staff deserve.
Gender Pay Gap Reports
Business Relationships
The strategy that our Directors have agreed prioritises the improvement of services to existing clients and bringing new clients to Cornwall Care in order to best support our local communities because of changes in their demographic and health needs. To do this we need to develop and maintain strong client relationships and strengthen links with local communities. We value our relationships with our commissioner organisations and our Directors seek to work as a strategic partner with all health and care colleagues so we can optimise the use of our shared experience in addressing the health and care challenges for vulnerable people in Cornwall.
Community and Environment
We are the largest independent care provider in Cornwall and our approach is to use this strength and the skills our organisation has to best support the vulnerable people and communities we care for. We want to leverage our expertise and enable colleagues to support the communities around us.
We have made considerable progress in changing the way we work in order that we reduce the impact we have on our environment. This includes improving the use of digital technologies to reduce travelling for our clients and our staff.
Members
As a Board of Directors our intention is to behave responsibly and ensure that management operate the business in a responsible manner, operating within the high standards of business conduct and good governance expected for a business such as ours. In doing so this will contribute to the delivery of the operational plan and the delivery of our strategic objectives agreed by Directors.
Our intention is to behave responsibly towards the staff we employ and treat them fairly and equally, so they will benefit from the successful delivery of our plan.
