How we are run

Southampton Hospitals Charity is a registered charity (no. 1051543). Our trustee is University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust (“the Trust”), which runs Southampton General Hospital, the Princess Anne Hospital, and the New Forest Birth Centre.

The Trust’s Charitable Funds Committee acts as our Board, setting the charity’s strategy, policies and budgets and overseeing our operations.

Our money is raised, held and accounted for independently from the Trust’s NHS funds and is spent exclusively for charitable purposes to improve the health and wellbeing of the NHS patients of the Trust’s hospitals. Our spending, by way of grants to the Trust, supplements and enhances, but does not replace, the Trust’s own NHS spending.

The majority of our donors, and those who leave money to us in their wills, say that they would like their donations and legacies spent for the benefit of patients in a particular ward or department, or on a particular type of medical service. We honour those wishes by maintaining about 370 separate funds each containing money which has been given for a particular ward, department or service and which will be spent accordingly.

The Charity officially started in 1995, however it was successfully relaunched in 2008 and has gone from strength to strength. The Charity President is Countess Mountbatten of Burma.