Board pack template

A board pack is the one document a board reads before it meets. It holds the agenda, the minutes of the last meeting, the reports, and the papers the board is being asked to decide on. It should be a single file in agenda order, with page numbers running from first page to last, rather than a folder of attachments.

There’s no official template. In the UK, neither the Companies Act 2006 nor the Charities Act 2011 says what a board pack must contain. Your own articles, constitution or standing orders might set a notice period or say how papers are sent, so check those. Beyond that there’s a convention, and it’s followed closely enough that a director from another board will usually find their way around yours. Here it is.

The standard order

Ten sections, in this order. A small board might use only some of them, and a large or listed company often has more. Getting the order right matters more than including every section.

1. Agenda

The numbered order of business, with timings if the meeting runs past about ninety minutes. In a good pack the agenda and contents page are one and the same: the item numbers are the section numbers, and each item shows the page its paper starts on.

2. Minutes of the previous meeting

For approval as an accurate record. Send them out with the pack instead of tabling them on the day, so corrections come in beforehand and don’t eat the first ten minutes of the meeting.

3. Matters arising, or the action log

One line per open action, with an owner and a date. It’s the shortest paper in the pack and the one most often left out. Without it, matters arising turns into a memory test, and actions that quietly died last quarter stay dead.

4. Chief executive’s or chair’s report

The story since the last meeting: what’s happened, what the board is being asked for today, and what it should be worried about. It should be written in prose by a person, not pasted together from slides. A report that’s honest about one thing going wrong is much easier to believe on everything else.

5. Finance report and management accounts

Figures against plan and against the same period last year, with commentary that explains the variances instead of repeating them. Include the cash position and any covenant or reserves test as well as profit. Plenty of organisations get into trouble while still reporting a profit.

6. Operational and committee reports

Sales, delivery, people, safety, and a report from any committee that has met since the last board: audit, remuneration, nominations, finance and general purposes. A committee report should say what the committee decided. “The committee met” tells the board nothing.

7. Papers for decision

One paper per decision. Put the recommendation in the first paragraph and the proposed resolution, worded so the minutes can quote it, in the last. If the board has to hunt for what’s being asked, the paper has already failed.

8. Risk register

Reviewed, not just reprinted. Show whether each risk is improving, stable or worsening since the last review. The direction of travel is what the board needs; the current rating on its own tells them much less.

9. Any other business

Items notified in advance. Genuine any other business doesn’t need a paper. If something needs a paper, it isn’t any other business and should have been on the agenda.

10. Appendices

Supporting detail that would otherwise interrupt a paper, like a full valuation, a thirty-page policy or a tender comparison. Refer to each one from the paper it belongs to. If no paper points to an appendix, it probably doesn’t belong in the pack.

The contents page is the part people get wrong

The contents page has to show page numbers from the merged pack. It sounds obvious, yet it’s the most common mistake in hand-made board packs. Someone writes the contents page first, from the list of documents, using each document’s own page numbers. Then a paper gains a page, everything after it shifts, and every reference in the meeting is one out.

So the order of work matters: merge first, read off the page numbers, then write the contents page. By hand, that means doing the contents page last and not touching anything afterwards.

Page numbers, and why the pack needs its own

Every page should have a number that runs continuously from the cover to the last appendix (Page 17 of 48), whatever the original document called it. Directors refer to pages out loud (“page 31, second paragraph”), and that only works if there’s exactly one page 31.

Take care with landscape pages. Put a number in the bottom right of a landscape page the way the file stores it, and it can land in a different corner from the portrait pages around it. Readers notice it looks wrong, even if they can’t say why.

A checklist before you send it

• The agenda item numbers match the section numbers.
• Every contents entry gives the page number in the merged pack.
• Page numbers run continuously from the cover to the last appendix.
• The previous minutes and the action log are included.
• Each paper for decision puts its recommendation first and its resolution last.
• Every appendix is referred to by the paper it supports.
• There’s a bookmark for the contents page and for each paper.

What is in the template

The PDF above is four pages, designed to be printed and filled in by hand. It isn’t an editable Word document or a fillable form.

• A cover sheet with ruled, labelled fields for organisation, meeting, date, time and place, and confidentiality label.
• An agenda and contents sheet with seventeen numbered rows, seven of the usual items already pencilled in, and a right-hand column for the page number in the merged pack.
• The section order above, with a line on what each section is for.
• A ten-point checklist for before you send it.

It works on its own. If you print it, fill it in and never come back, that’s fine by us.

Or have it assembled for you

Board Pack Factory handles the mechanical part: merging, numbering, the contents page and the bookmarks. Add your PDFs and drag them into agenda order. You get a cover, a contents page with the right page numbers, section dividers, continuous page numbers and a bookmark for every paper. The example pack shows exactly what you’ll get. It all happens in your browser, so your papers are never uploaded.