Boards Wales newsletter – September 2025

Blog post

This month I comment on two recent reviews into performance in local government in Wales, one on Cardiff and one on Wrexham. It’s a tale of two cities, with one city garnering praise for its performance and ethos, and another raising significant concerns about the culture.

Often, governance issues arise from poor culture. This is why it’s important to seek external support when organisations want to hold themselves to account. And external support works best when there’s an existing programme of internal self-reflection and evaluation. At NICW we do this on an annual basis to try to ensure that we remember what we are delivering on. Something that sounds straightforward, but we often lose sight of the ‘big picture’ when dealing with everyday issues – unless we remind ourselves about it.

Statistics

A spreadsheet showing various statistics and details of board positions, listed by date

Since mid March I have been trying to be a bit more systematic about how I collect data on Board opportunities. I now have a database comprising the 50 opportunities I’ve highlighted since then. There are some interesting statistics that come out of it:

  • 40% of the appointments are paid (presumably most of the public Boards)
  • The day rate of the paid positions varies from Ā£195 to Ā£337
  • 64% of the appointments were either for one position, or didn’t specify how many positions were available. The most number of positions available is 6 – in case you’re interested, those positions are available until 30 September (it’s with the WRU).
  • Seven of the 50 appointments posted were for Chair positions

One other statistic of interest – the LinkedIn page now has more than 1,000 followers šŸ‘€šŸŽ‡ Thanks to all who follow there! Tagging ‘Boards Wales’ into your job posts on LinkedIn will generally get a reaction from the page šŸ‘ļø

Sponsor Boards.Wales?

If your organisation values good governance and wants to see it thrive in Wales, Iā€™d love to collaborate. Sponsorship would help cover the time I spend maintaining and growing Boards.Wales ā€” keeping it up-to-date, relevant, and freely accessible to all.

Iā€™m currently working on a sponsorship proposal, but in the meantime, any support is deeply appreciated (here’s the link). My thanks go especially to Simon Slater of Cynnal Cymru for his generous support last month ā¤ļø.

If you’d like to explore sponsorship options or just start a conversation, please get in touch.

David Clubb