The University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust provides adult district general hospital services for Birmingham as well as specialist treatments for the West Midlands. The trust operates the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Edgbaston (QEHB), adjacent to its older namesake and connected to it by a footbridge. QEHB began receiving patients at its Emergency Department on 16 June 2010, and replaced Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Selly Oak Hospital. The trust is under the leadership of Chair Dame Yve Buckland and chief executive Jonathan Brotherton On 30 June 2004, the Trust received authorisation to become one of the first NHS Foundation Trusts in England, under the leadership of ex-chief executive Dame Julie Moore, who succeeded Mark Britnell. From 2006 to November 2013 the Chair of the Trust was Sir Albert Bore. Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith took over as Chair in December 2013. On 1 April 2018 it merged with the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust. The combined organisation will have a turnover of £1.6bn and 2,700 beds across four main hospitals. All the executive directors are white. There has not been a director who was not white in the last 20 years though more than 40% of the city’s population is from a black, Asian or ethnic minority background. In 2017 36% of the trust’s overall workforce were from a BAME background and in 2020 about half the medical staff. Development In December 2013 it emerged that the Trust was interested in expanding into Primary Care, a proposal which was not welcomed by all the local General Practitioners. In 2013 the trust established a subsidiary company, UHB Facilities Ltd, to which 3 staff were transferred. The intention was to achieve VAT benefits which arise because NHS trusts can only claim VAT back on a small subset of goods and services they buy. The Value Added Tax Act 1994 provides a mechanism through which NHS trusts can qualify for refunds on contracted out services. The trust has one of the 11 Genomics Medicines Centres associated with Genomics England which were planned to open across England in February 2014. All the data produced in the 100,000 Genomes project will be made available to drugs companies and researchers to help them create precision drugs for future generations. It is one of the biggest providers of specialised services in England, which generated an income of £327.7 million in 2014/5. It arranged a deal with