Trust names change faster than the sticker on the car park barrier

A representative’s notes will say “Southampton General” long after the legal entity on the invoice is something longer. Finance will have a third string. The compliance extract will have a fourth. If we colour a plate from any one of those lists, two people will swear the map is wrong, and both will have a letterhead to prove it.

We keep a dated register of NHS trusts and health boards and we ask you for the identifier you actually store — ODS code if you have it, otherwise the name as it appears in last year’s disclosure. Where two strings point at the same site, the plate carries both, in small type, with the legal name in the key.

Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland do not borrow England’s trust vocabulary. A “board” is not a “trust”. Colouring the central belt as if it were Wessex is how briefings go sour before coffee.

We date the plate. If your merger landed last Thursday, say so in the briefing. We would rather delay a week than publish a pretty lie.