Help centre / People & access / Remove a trustee who has left
Remove a trustee who has left
When a trustee steps down, do three things: end their appointment in the Register of appointments, disable their sign-in under Users & roles, and remove their access to systems like the bank and email. Their history stays on the record.
When a trustee leaves, there are three places to update. It takes about ten minutes, and you won't lose anything. Their service dates, votes and decisions all stay on record.
Close off a leaver's access
- Open More, then Register of appointments, and find the trustee in the list of people currently serving.
- Select the pencil to edit their appointment, then choose End / step down and enter their last day. They move to Past appointments, with the dates they served kept.
- Open Admin & settings, then Users.
- Find their account and choose Disable sign-in. They can no longer sign in, and the change goes into your audit history.
- Open Governance, then Systems & access.
- Remove their access to each system they could use, starting with banking and email. If they were a bank signatory, update the mandate with your bank.
- On each system, update the Who has access note and select Reviewed so the register matches reality.
- Work through the rest of the checklist under When someone leaves: recover keys and devices, and transfer anything they owned, like shared inboxes or files.
What happens to their record
Nothing is deleted. Their past appointment stays in the register, which is what your annual return and report draw on. Minutes they approved, votes they cast and conflicts they declared all stay exactly as they were. Ending an appointment can't break anything.
If you know the leaving date in advance
You can set an Access ends date on their account under Users instead of waiting. Their sign-in stops on that day without anyone having to remember. For example, Meadowbank Community Trust sets it to the day after a retiring trustee's last board meeting.
If they sat on a committee
Committee membership is recorded separately. Check the committees page and end their membership there too.
The governance behind this: our free guide on charitycontrol.org explains the why in plain English.