NHS Trust

A National Health Service trust provides services on behalf of the English NHS and NHS Wales.

The trusts are not trusts in the legal sense but are in effect public sector corporations. Each trust is headed by a board consisting of executive and non-executive directors, and is chaired by a non-executive director. Non-executive directors are recruited by open advertisement.

All trust boards are required to have an audit committee consisting only of non-executive directors, on which the chair may not sit. This committee is entrusted not only with supervision of financial audit, but of systems of corporate governance within the trust.