What specific board minutes or procurement records show the formal decision to choose Southern General/Shieldhall over Cowglen in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde?
Executive summary
Publicly available Oversight Board minutes for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde are hosted on gov.scot and list meetings from 2019–2020 but the documents surfaced in the reporting do not, on their face, contain a clear, explicit recorded board resolution naming Southern General/Shieldhall as the formal choice over Cowglen for the disputed site decision [1] [2] [3]. There is no procurement record or dedicated board paper in the supplied sources that unambiguously shows the formal award decision; further information would require targeted Freedom of Information (FOI) requests or direct retrieval of board papers and procurement files from NHSGGC [4] [5].
1. What the supplied oversight minutes actually are and where they live
The Scottish Government publishes NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Oversight Board minutes on gov.scot, including meeting records dated 3 December 2019, 9 January 2020 and 30 October 2020, which are the primary minutes documents surfaced in the reporting set [1] [2] [3]. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde also maintains an official site with information about the board, meetings and papers, and contact channels for board meeting attendance and queries [6] [5]. Those are the authoritative public entry points for board minutes and papers identified in the available sources [1] [2] [3] [6].
2. What the minutes do not show — absence of an explicit procurement award in the provided documents
A careful reading of the cited oversight minutes pages in the supplied corpus does not produce a single, cited minute or procurement schedule that states “Southern General/Shieldhall chosen over Cowglen” as a formal decision recorded in a procurement award or board resolution within those documents [1] [2] [3]. The reporting set contains the minutes pages themselves but not a separate procurement contract notice, tender award notice, or board paper explicitly documenting a final site-selection vote in favour of Southern General/Shieldhall rather than Cowglen; therefore the supplied material does not demonstrate the formal decision in the specific terms asked for [1] [2] [3].
3. Where such a formal decision would typically be recorded and why it’s not visible here
Formally binding procurement awards or strategic site-selection decisions for an NHS board are normally recorded in a combination of board papers, procurement committee minutes, contract award notices and archived tender documents rather than solely in high-level oversight minutes; NHSGGC’s public-facing site lists board meetings, papers and reports as the repository for those materials [6] [7]. The absence of a procurement record in the provided minutes suggests either the decisive procurement record sits in a different set of board papers or procurement files not included in these public oversight minutes, or that the final approval occurred in a sub-committee or procurement process whose documentation is held separately [6] [7].
4. How to obtain the specific records requested
The supplied corpus includes a WhatDoTheyKnow FOI thread pointer and contact information for the NHSGGC board secretariat, which are the practical routes to request the precise documents — e.g., FOI disclosure of procurement award notices, board papers relating to site selection, and minutes of any procurement sub-committee — because those specific documents are not present in the cited public-minute pages [4] [5]. Submitting an FOI to NHSGGC via their Freedom of Information team or using the WhatDoTheyKnow channel used by local requesters is the recommended next step to secure the formal procurement record or explicit board resolution [4] [5].
5. Alternative explanations, actor incentives and transparency limits
Absent the explicit procurement award in the provided oversight minutes, plausible alternatives are that the decision was recorded in a procurement award notice, in confidential commercial papers with redactions, or in separate board papers for which statutory exemptions or commercial sensitivities limit public posting; NHSGGC’s governance pages indicate board papers and reports are maintained centrally but do not guarantee every sub-committee or procurement paper is published online [6] [7]. Stakeholders backing different sites may have incentives to emphasize either formal minutes or alternative internal documents, so transparency demands an FOI or request to the board secretariat to remove ambiguity [6] [5].