Annual members’ meeting 2024/25

Our annual members’ meeting took place on Thursday 30 October which saw our Chair John Lawlor and members of the executive team look back at our performance and achievements of 2024/25.

Our CEO Michael Holland explored some of our highlights from the year including:

• A new CPD course focusing on non-recent child sexual abuse disclosure, co-created with our trauma service and lived experience survivors
• Our Fitzjohn’s unit being awarded the Innovative Excellence Award by the British Psychoanalytic Council
• Senior course lead of our Social Work MA, Shantel Thomas, winning the prestigious Social Justice Advocate Award at the Social Worker of the Year awards
• Celebrating of 30 years of Tavistock Consulting, our specialist organisational development and change consultancy.

Michael continued by highlighting the work which has been carried out for our patients, students and staff, including the launch of a new Trust-wide patient experience of service questionanaire to help develop and improve our services, and how we have adopted the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF), marking a cultural shift from blame-oriented incident investigations to a system-focused, compassionate, and learning-led approach.

For our students, learning and teaching continued to be well-reviewed, with an overall satisfaction rating of 82%. Satisfaction rose significantly among doctoral research students and student wellbeing rates continued to improve.

We saw improved results in the 2024 NHS staff survey with a response rate of 55% – an improvement from 2023 and better than comparable organisations. We have also improved results in 7 of the 9 people promise areas, demonstrating our commitment to improving staff experience.

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Our Interim Chief Finance Officer Jon Bell reviewed our finances, outlining our cash flow challenges and our plans to breakeven in 2025/26 and the long term sustainability of our clinical and educational services.

Our Interim Director of Corporate Governance Dorothy Otite proposed an extension to the terms of office of some members of the Council of Governors, which will ensure they stay in post until our proposed merger with North London. After a show of hands in the room, and virtually, the motion was approved.

Our lead Governor Kathy Elliott spoke about the role of our Governors, and how they play a key role in listening to the views and experiences of our members and the public, and make sure our key stakeholders have a say in the shaping the work of the Trust.

Kathy also outlined highlights from the Governors including a new programme of service visits with Non-Executive Directors to help them learn and update their understanding of the current work and challenges. Our Governors also now attend all board committees, helping them understand more deeply how Non-Executive Directors are scrutinising and supporting specific areas of governance.

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The meeting is scheduled to be the final annual members meeting the Tavistock and Portman holds ahead of our proposed merger with North London NHS Foundation Trust.

Therefore our Chief Nursing Officer Clare Scott along with Paul Dugmore, Director of Education (Learning & Teaching), reviewed some highlights since April 2025, and the work we are still doing to improve our services for patients, students and staff including;

• Celebrating our staff achievements at our ‘Values in Practice’ awards
• Embedding our values and behaviours with our staff
• Congratulating our 425 graduates and our honorary doctorates, Tim Dartington and Guilaine Kinouani
• Highlighting our students who have received bursaries by our charity
• How we have embedded the patient safety incident response framework (PSIRF) to improve patient safety, and our anti racism framework PCREF
• Improving school life for our students and staff at our school Gloucester House, which has been rated “Good” by Ofsted.

Finally, Lena Samuels, Chair of North London Foundation Trust, gave a few remarks ahead of our merger by acquisition.

The meeting was also our Chair John Lawlor’s final meeting. After three years in the position, John announced his departure earlier this year, with Aruna Mehta taking over as Interim Chair from 1 November 2025.

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