Guidance for servicing meetings

Use our standardised templates and resources to improve the consistency, accessibility and agility of meeting records and minutes.

Key resources

Guidebooks

For guidance on servicing meetings of formal University-level committees and oversight bodies (ie Council, Senate and their subcommittees, UEB and its subcommittees with a formal compliance function at University level), see our Information for secretaries to formal University-level committees web page.

Templates

This section contains templates for agendas and minutes, as well as item, decision and action (IDA) logs. You can tailor an IDA log according to your meeting through categorising themes or who raised the item, to adding approval columns and noting if it is for information, approval or discussion.

Accessibility

All meeting papers should be produced in line with accessibility standards.

If you are creating documents frequently, you should attend the creating accessible documents training (login required).

Read guidance on holding Inclusive meetings and events.

More information on creating accessible documents can be found in the guidebook for servicing meetings and the Accessibility Skills Guide.

Training and support

To aid with these new ways of working, training and workshop recordings are available and can be accessed by emailing becky.bleaden@york.ac.uk. You can also view the training and workshop slides below.

Minutes training (slides) - learn how to write accessible and informal minutes
IDA log workshops (slides) - see a quick overview of features and best practices of IDA logs

For further advice on templates, accessibility, and the transition to the new style of meetings, email becky.bleaden@york.ac.uk.

The resources on this page were developed through the Minutes Project as part of process improvements for the Change programme.

Read scope and background of the Minutes Project

Over spring and summer 2023, our Faculty Support Officers analysed current meeting arrangements and created bespoke recommendations and templates for all departments. The aims of this project were:

to look at the way we service and operate meetings
to review the level of meeting record required for each meeting according to governance requirements
to use existing staff resources and digital tools more effectively, ultimately leading to improved job satisfaction and better workloads
to improve and set a minimum standard for the accessibility of digital content as per accessibility laws
to increase capacity to attend digital skills training to help build resilience, digital curiosity and knowledge
to provide standardised templates for agendas, minutes and action logs
to increase consistency and agility of meeting records
to improve communication of meeting outcomes and create consistent methods of sharing meeting documents in advance

Out of scope

Excluded from this project were formal University-level decision-making and oversight bodies whose responsibilities include: taking formal decisions on University-wide matters, approval of University-level strategy and policy/regulation (including as evidence for external bodies), top level monitoring of areas of University activity and significant authority relating to financial approvals. For example: Planning Committee, Senate, Council, UTC, UEB, SCA, HR meetings (Disciplinary Panels, appeals etc).