Have your say on the governance review

The institute currently has 43 trustees on the council, comprising branch chairs, chairs of standing boards and committees, and officers of the institute (the presidential chain and honorary treasurer).

This structure evolved when the CIOB was purely a membership organisation.

As it now has a Royal Charter, it must also serve the public. In addition, a new charities bill will remove the institute's automatic right to charitable status.

"We have to be able to demonstrate that the Institute acts in the interests of the general public and that includes having world class governance arrangements," explained CIOB’s director of change management Trevor Patterson.

Mix of skills

Sir Paul Judge, a governance expert, is heading the review. Working on current best practice, a new board of trustees would be a mixture of elected and selected people, to allow for the right range of skills to be included. An initial survey in May showed 95% of members taking part thought this was important. The next survey will ask members what they think the right proportion of elected trustees should be and what the optimum total number of trustees is.

Consultant Mazars will present the findings from the survey and options for governance models to the Council on 25 October 2006. The plan is that the Council will approve one of the models to recommend to membership. The model must then be presented to the Privy Council and Charity Commission.

If you want your views on this to be heard, you need to complete an online survey by 30 September.

This can be done by following these steps:

1. The survey is only available online. Visit www.ciob.org.uk.

2. Enter the members' area.

If you have not already registered you will need to give your membership number, email address and date of birth and you will be asked to create a username and password. Members without an email address can register using governance@ciob.org.uk for the purpose of the survey.

3. You will be able to see a webcast explaining more about the governance review and complete the survey.