Long ago, I managed people. If I'd thought of making a 20-something carry the can for a serious organisational failure, I'd have been too ashamed to look in the mirror. So I hope NHS Fife top brass aren't planning that.
The one to start with is the Chief Executive of NHS Scotland, who's also the Director-General in the Scottish Govt for Health and Social Care. The NHS Scotland Central Legal Office, which provides legal services to all NHS Boards, reports ultimately to her. /
NHS Fife's Board has seven members who are there as part of their job in the NHS. Carol Potter is the CEO.
Janette Keenan is the Director of Nursing.
Christopher McKenna is the Medical Director.
Susan Dunsmuir is the Director of Finance.
Joy Tomlinson is the Director of Public Health.
Lynne Parsons is the Employee Director.
Nicola Robertson is Chair of the Area Clinical Forum.
Then there are 11 "non-executive" board members. Their job (broadly) is to make sure NHS Fife does it job properly; non-execs are the first line of accountability. They are part-time (I think) and paid a day rate for their input (2024-25 figs below). publications.scot.nhs.uk/files/dl-2024-…
The most important of the non-execs is the chair, Pat Kilpatrick. That her name is not familiar after all these months of coverage of the Peggie case is very surprising.
The vice-chair, Alistair Morris, is the next most important.
Cllr Mary Lockhart represents Fife Council on the Board.
Professor Deborah Williamson represents the University of St Andrews.
Jo Bennett is another non-exec.
Sinead Braiden is another (and is the Equality and Diversity Champion on the Board).
Alastair Grant is another non-exec.
Colin Grieve is another non-exec.
Ann Haston is another non-exec.
John Kemp is another non-exec.
Arlene Wood is another non-exec.
There is a vacancy for the Whistle-blowing Champion.
"The overall purpose of the Board is to ensure the efficient, effective, and accountable governance of NHS Fife and to provide strategic leadership and direction for the system as a whole, focussing on agreed outcomes." ()/nhsfife.org/about-us/nhs-f…
Every person in this thread has years more professional experience (many more in most cases) than Ms Bumba, and is likely to hold, or have held if retired, more highly paid jobs. They are ultimately accountable for every decision taken in this case./
In addition there is a senior management team, whose collective role in decision-making relation to this case will depend on how this structure is used by the Chief Exec. Some posts will be directly involved, some possibly not at all./ nhsfife.org/about-us/senio…
These people are responsible for high-level decisions in NHS Fife. Staff who have already taken the witness stand, or will take it over the next two weeks, are seeing their names and faces all over the media. But the thread above is full of people who ought be even better known.
@threadreaderapp please unroll.
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The Lib Dems have just won a council by-election in Edinburgh.
The party of Ben "Toxicity" Maguire, Alex "Standing Ovation" Cole-Hamilton, Christine Jardine, Sheila Ritchie and so many other allies would want voters to know how important self-ID is to them, wouldn't it?
1/n
Someone who lives in the ward has kindly been collecting all the election leaflets she got through the door for this election.
2/n
The Lib Dem Group recently helped pass a motion putting pressure on Edinburgh Women's Aid, after SWA made clear that trans-identifying men could only access those of its services which don't involve direct contact with women survivors using them. 3/n murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2025/06/16/the…
Just to pull this apart really precisely, and illustrate why the responses to the story are so weak and inadequate, there are two parts to this tale in which the state repeatedly failed to disclose to a woman’s defence lawyer the entire criminal record of a convicted murderer. /
First, Police Scotland kept sending back blank replies to the Crown Office when asked, until the defence lawyer produced one of the several press articles reporting on the man’s change of name and self-identification, and consequent move into the women’s prison estate./
Police Scotland is now snarking about the way this error is being described, holding an internal review with no mention of bringing in any external check on that (PIRC is obvious), and has already, without having held that review, assured the minister it’s a one- off error./
What Darren McG describes is related to a policy culture that prefers “lived experience” to careful data collection & analysis. Yes, statistics have their limits. But stats also protect people; they require no-one vulnerable to step into the limelight to prove something matters.
I worry that we have a political class/generation which finds it hard to absorb ideas in an abstract sense, based on numbers and other depersonalised information (“what if” cases eg), and can’t take things properly in unless a “lived experience” story is put in front of them. /
In recent years, one lobby group has put a few people in a room at Holyrood to have drop-in chats with MSPs, and called it a “living library”. So a tiny number of lobbyist-selected vulnerable (on their own argument) people were literally put on display, to justify legal change./
Today, class, we will be interpreting this sign, with specific reference to the messages it conveys about nappy changing. I’m delighted to announce we have a guest lecturer from a major Russell group university. I have however concealed his identity because… well, you’ll see./
Does the class have any questions about this interpretation?
Let’s not always see the same hands.
And if there’s a fire alarm, it’s not planned, and I’d be grateful for help getting our guest out the emergency exit without running.
For the first full edition of The Frontline's regular Policy and Power section, we had a look at what's on the agenda of legislatures around the UK over the next two weeks.
Committees are critical to the Holyrood system, is the theory - where the detailed discussions mostly happen. So having an idea about what dates they are planning to look at things helps people who might want to contact members in advance, tune in or even attend in person./
How do you find out what's on their agenda? You can look on individual committee entries on the parliament's site, or you can look at the Business Bulletin, which is a bit quicker, as it pulls together all the information in one place./ parliament.scot/chamber-and-co…
So, just as for slopping out, if a case is goes ahead, it will be Ministers who are in the spotlight defending the decision to allow some male prisoners to be housed with women based on self-ID. Potentially as we head into the 2026 Holyrood election. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/…
It means the risk of headlines that look a bit like this. But, unlike slopping out, which was due to inaction - specifically failure to invest faster in modernising the prison estate - cases here will be about active choices made by ministers, particularly since 2014./