Agenda item

The Chair, Cllr Pat Knight, read out the following statement to the Board:-

“Well this is my last meeting of the Health and Wellbeing Board.  I have been Chair now for 4 years.  I haven’t missed many meetings, only when I was off ill 2 ½ years ago.

Firstly, I want to thank every Partner Organisation who have contributed to the success of our Board here in Doncaster.

Thank you to my Vice-Chairs, Councillor Tony Corden, Susan Jordan and now Dr David Crichton.  We have come a long way with our Board and from listening to other Chairs I have met over the years, we seem to be well placed as a top team, even our Peer Review didn’t throw up any concerns.  I think we have the right people on the Board and their comments and commitment are vital to our success now and in the future.

Some of you here today have been on the Board from the beginning of the formal Board and I want to thank you for your support and dedication.

For those of you who haven’t been on the Board for that length of time, may I wish you and your organisations continued success and involvement in the Board.

My thanks go firstly to Louise Robson and Jonathan Goodrum who between them produce the forward plan, the minutes, book the venues etc for our meetings and as we all know, without our Administration and back office staff our agendas and papers wouldn’t happen.  So thank you.

Thank you also to Claire Hewitt, Rupert’s PA, who always seems to juggle diaries to get those all-important meetings for us to meet and for organising the fruit for our time out sessions and for all the organisational things that happen.

Thank you to Allan Wiltshire for spending time with me prior to HWB meetings when quarterly performance reports are on the agenda.  He explains them fully to me and any questions I have he gets me the answers from officers.

Lastly, my biggest thanks go to Rupert as the Director of Public Health and his predecessor Tony Baxter for putting up with me.  Rupert is very good at listening to my questions and helps me to understand a topic I am not familiar with.  Thank you for helping me understand the Budget report, as at home my husband deals with our finances and just says “Pat, what did you spend that much money on?”, so as you can see, finance is not my strong point.

Rupert and his Team are great to work with and very helpful.  Probably I will miss working alongside all these professionals the most when I end my term of office as a Councillor in May.

It has been a privilege to be in Cabinet and have this great team of professionals behind me.

Thank you all for being professional, encouraging and for being my friend as Chair of the HWB.

I hope that you will show the same amount of support for my successor whoever that will be and I will try to keep abreast of the continued success of this Board.  You may see me in the public gallery on occasions.  I may even ask questions, so as the scouting motto goes, “be prepared!”.

On behalf of the Board, Dr Rupert Suckling thanked Cllr Knight for her leadership over the years and presented her with a card and flowers as a token of the Board’s appreciation.