The Scottish Futures Trust is a limited company, operating as a non-departmental public body owned by Scottish Government, with our sponsor minister being Scotland's Deputy First Minister, Shona Robison.
Our Board
We are governed by an experienced Board, made up of a non-executive chairman, six non-executive directors and our chief executive and are as follows:
- Joe Philipsz, chairman
- Bill Matthews*
- Pauline Mills*
- Graham Watson*
- Stella Matko*
- Nick Rowan*
- Stephen Slessor*
- Peter Reekie, Scottish Futures Trust’s chief executive
*Members of the SFT Group Audit Committee
The Board also oversees SFT investments (SFTi) which is a subsidiary of SFT and is our investment company. It manages the investments we have in the five hub companies, as well as in the 41 associated project companies and a number of affordable housing partnerships.
Board Gender Representation
The intention of the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 is to help address the historic and persistent underrepresentation of women in public life.
Section 1 of the Act sets a “gender representation objective” that a board has 50% of non-executive members who are women. The papers linked below reflect the gender representation of the SFT and SFTi Boards.
Board Register of Interests
We regularly update and publish a Register of Interests of our Board members.
Framework Agreement with Scottish Government
In the 2022/23 financial year, we moved to a new framework agreement with Scottish Government that requires us to report under FReM (Scottish Government’s Financial Reporting Manual).
A Scottish Statutory Instrument allowing us to be audited by the Auditor General of Scotland was laid on 5 September 2022 and was considered by the Economy and Fair Work Committee on 5 October 2022.
It was signed by the Minister on 29 October and came into force on 30 October 2022. Our financial year ends on 31 March and our accounts are published by December of that year.