Scheme of delegation & terms of reference

For the helpdesk team

Scheme of delegation

The scheme of delegation sets who decides what across the trust. Trust board, executive head, committees, local governing bodies, individual officers. The same surface holds per-committee terms of reference, since they answer the same question at a finer grain.

What’s on the index

The page lists every Terms of Reference document, grouped by scope type:

Trust-wide — the overarching scheme of delegation.
Committee — per-committee ToRs (finance, audit, standards, local governing bodies).
Role — delegations to named roles (CEO, COO, CFO, Headteacher).
Other — any custom scope the trust defines.

Each row shows the title, latest version number, and when it was last published. Click in to see the version history and the active body text.

Versioning

ToRs are versioned, not edited in-place. When you change the scheme:

Open the existing record.
Click New version.
Edit the body and summary.
Publish.

The previous version stays accessible — you can answer “what did the scheme of delegation say in June 2025?” by selecting that version from the history.

The latest published version is what binds today. Drafts can sit in the system unpublished while you go through the approval process.

Approval

ToRs are usually approved at a board meeting. Link the meeting that approved each version (free-text in the version notes; there isn’t a hard FK today). For larger changes, attach the resolution as a PDF.

Gotchas

Don’t delete versions. The audit trail for governance decisions depends on them being preserved.
Per-committee ToRs should link back to the committee record so navigation works in both directions. The link is via committee ID.
Role-scoped delegations (CEO, etc.) don’t link to a person — they describe the role. If the CEO changes, the delegation doesn’t need re-publishing.