NHS Corporate Identity Brand Guidelines (NHS Wales) and Publication Notice 20/01.

When the NHS in Wales was reorganised into local health boards, a common corporate identity was introduced so the boards read as one family. The brand guidelines, amended in September 2015 and still published by NHS Wales bodies such as Health Education and Improvement Wales, cover logo use for health boards and trusts, the NHS in Wales logo on its own and alongside the Welsh Government identity, fonts, colours, stationery, websites and a page of sample signage.

The guidelines are short on signage detail: one page showing a site entrance sign and post-mounted directional panels, all bilingual. Each health board then applies the identity through its own brand guardian and sign specification.

NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership Specialist Estates Services issued Publication Notice 20/01 on 9 January 2020 to chief executives and estates managers of health boards and trusts. It updated the Welsh status note for Wayfinding, the 2005 NHS Estates guidance, to reflect the Welsh Language Standards, and states that signage in public or internal operational areas where staff have access must be in Welsh and English at all times, whether permanent or temporary.

Each health board has its own compliance notice from the Welsh Language Commissioner. Ask for it at briefing: it settles questions such as whether Welsh must be positioned to be read first, and those duties override any sample layout in the brand guidelines.

The closest match is the HSE Signage Manual in Ireland, where the Official Languages Acts make Irish compulsory and put it first. The structure is similar: a national language law, a health-service identity and a wayfinding method. NHS Scotland treats Gaelic as optional at Board level, and NHS England has no second-language duty.