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Welcome to this autumn edition of the Non-Executive Bulletin, through which we aim to keep you in touch with recent policies and developments from the Department of Health, as well as focusing on the Appointment Commission's work in support of our non-executive community.

Most of the chairs among you will have been at the annual conference in October and we have a feature article about it in this bulletin. Talking to those of you who were there, it seems that the format of short presentations but allowing the majority of time for your questions and contributions was very successful.  I think that the quality of contributions from the floor certainly kept the team from Richmond House on their toes. Nigel Crisp told me afterwards that he had found it very stimulating and was encouraged by the understanding displayed by chairs of the challenges currently facing the NHS.

Incidentally, over lunch I picked up a copy of the NHS Modernisation Agency's publication 10 High Impact Changes for Service Improvement and Delivery. I was very impressed and would urge those of you who have not yet seen it to get hold of a copy. The changes have all been field-tested and evaluated in the NHS over the last three years and cover many different aspects of the patients' healthcare journey. However, what struck me really forcibly was the scale of the benefits which could be realised.

For example, measures to optimise patient flow through bottlenecks in the system have freed up 30 per cent of additional capacity in one hospital. This is a result of applying process templates which the production engineers amongst you will recognise from the manufacturing sector. The benefits aren't simply in capacity. Clinical outcomes improved because care was provided more speedily; patients had reduced waits and a more personalised service, and staff stress was reduced because they were better able to plan and control their work.

10 High Impact Changes is written in a very readable way with documented support for its recommendations and supporting statistics and data where necessary. I do hope that armed with a copy you will be able to ask your executive what steps your organisation is taking.

Still with the conference, I spent a few minutes in the afternoon session alerting chairs to the need to be circumspect if, as we are led to expect, there is a general election in the not too distant future. My main message was 'business as usual' but to take particular care to be politically impartial in all your public utterances relating to your board and your organisation. Either we or the department will be sending out detailed guidance once an election has been announced but the political climate is already hotting up - so be vigilant.

The development of integrated governance was featured in the July bulletin and I am pleased to say that progress continues. Professor Michael Deighan, who some of you will know from his work with the clinical governance support team, is leading the development stage by tackling the various and, in some cases, overlapping requirements from the department which impinge on NHS governance. Working with the Healthcare Commission and Monitor to ensure that healthcare standards, inspection and regulatory requirements are consistent, the plan is to have a clear integrated governance scheme by April next year. Following which I hope that we will be able to roll-out a scheme of training for whole boards which can revolutionise governance and really enable you in your board role.

In this issue we feature our work on competency-based selection. As many of you will know from your wider activities, this form of selection is already the method of choice for executive appointments since it is generally reckoned to provide a better prediction of future success than simply relying on a CV of past performance. We expect to have all interview and selection panel members trained in the new techniques by next April.

From time to time we are asked for our views on areas where there may be a conflict of interest between the board role of a chair or non-executive and their other activities. It is very difficult to give central direction by listing prescribed activities and, in making appointments, we assume that the guidance in the Codes of Conduct and Accountability will be followed; that is, individuals will register their interests in the boards' register of interests, they will declare any interests that might arise in the course of board business or debate and withdraw if necessary. This seems to have worked well over a number of years with the onus on boards to ensure probity. Occasionally, when considering a candidate for appointment, we take the view that an individual's close working relationships with the local NHS would provide an insuperable barrier, but these occasions are rare.

However, the National Training Board has come across a number of cases where non-executives who are training professionals in their outside life wish to use their skills to train people within the NHS. For those circumstances the board suggested a policy, which the commission has agreed, allowing such activity in all NHS organisations other than those in the health economy within which the individual is a non-executive. (Exceptionally for strategic health authority chairs and non-executives, the restriction applies to all organisations in the SHA area.) Details of the policy are included under the FAQs in this bulletin.

We now have more details of our new role following the department's review of arm's length bodies. As a result we have been asked to extend our work to the recruitment and appointment of members of patient and public involvement forums. This will be quite a challenge given the large number of appointments involved, particularly the need to ensure a forum membership well-rooted in the community and able to contribute constructively on behalf of patients. We are working closely with CPPIH and looking forward to views from a survey of forum members.

I am pleased to say that our website has overcome its technical difficulties and is now up and running again: