The NHS PAM 2025/26 collection closes on Tuesday 8 September, and most of the teams we work with are dealing with the same three problems.

1. The scoring has changed underneath them. With the move from graded assurance to binary compliance, the amber middle ground has gone. A position that is 95% of the way there, one that last year would have been rated as requiring minimal improvement, is now a “No” and scores the same as 0%. Compliance figures are falling sharply at trusts where nothing on the ground has changed.

2. Comparison with last year doesn’t work. We mapped the full 2025/26 question set against 2024/25. Of roughly 700 questions, only around 16% map directly onto a prior-year equivalent, about a third are entirely new, and 151 of last year’s questions have no home in the new structure. There is no defensible way to put this year’s number next to last year’s on a board slide.

3. Someone needs to explain all of this has to the board. NHS England has asked trusts to answer honestly, including where they fall short of specified targets, and has said that widespread non-compliance will be read as a signal about the standard rather than a failing of individual trusts. Reasonable, and probably overdue. It still leaves an EFM director presenting a “sea of red” and needing the board to understand why that was expected, and why an honest red is more useful to them than the amber it replaced.

Over the past week, a number of the trusts we support have asked us to help with board papers explaining the change of methodology, why the reported position will look worse, what NHS England actually expects, and why the effort this year belongs in the costed action plans rather than the headline score. Every “No” feeds a costed, owned action, and those plans are what will carry capital and maintenance funding cases.

In the spirit of my PhD research on knowledge sharing and our mission at CompliMind, I’ve turned that work into a generic template. It’s a board paper in standard NHS format, with the purpose, recommendations and numbered sections drafted, ready to adapt to your trust’s governance route. It covers the methodology change, the expected impact on your reported position, NHS England’s guidance in its own words, the comparability position backed by the mapping figures, and the case for prioritising the action plans.

Just drop in your email and you will be able to download the DOCX file.

If the link doesn't work or you need a walkthrough, just email me at carl@complimind.co.uk and I'll send it across.